


Grounded

by atamascolily



Series: Inheritance Side Stories [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Fix-It of Sorts, Flashbacks, Force Trees, Force Visions, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Jawas (Star Wars), Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tatooine (Star Wars), Tusken Raiders (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2020-04-23 04:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19143163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: The desert has a way of growing the most unlikely friendships.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is not canon-compliant with certain details of the prequel trilogy, especially the final scenes in _Revenge of the Sith_. Also, there are major spoilers for my fic [Desert Places](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17735222), should that be something you care about.

What Obi-wan likes most about Tatooine is how few questions its inhabitants ask, especially when it comes to strangers. No one in Mos Eisley, not even the ostensible authorities, questions a hooded man with a swaddled infant; even without Jedi tricks to persuade them, no one cares. It's the heat, he thinks, strolling the dusty streets--the sun bakes every brain cell, burns them up so only sweltering apathy remains. He's able to purchase a beast of burden and deliver his precious, living cargo without any problems, any pursuit. 

What Obi-wan hates about Tatooine: everything else. 

The twin suns: unbearable. The endless expanse of desert: abominable. The dull veneer of petty crime, the scrabbling for resources, the cascading dust: exhausting. 

He hates this planet more than he did on his first visit, if such a thing is possible. On that trip, his world was simple and stable, and no one he loved had died yet. Back then, the world wasn't simpler, but he had a place in the galaxy, a dream--a future, even. Now everything else has been transformed beyond recognition into a nightmare except for Tatooine, which is still limping along in its own venal affairs, as if in mockery of all his sacrifice and loss. The inhabitants don't care whether the Republic or the Empire is in charge; nothing in their lives changes either way. It's so unfair. 

If he's honest with himself, Obi-wan hates this place so intently because it spawned one Anakin Skywalker, the being to whom all his thoughts circle back over and over again, the being responsible for this mess, from more than one point of view. On the surface, Anakin was nothing special, but his presence in the Force whispered of power at levels unseen by any being in living memory--a potential to be tapped and channeled in service of the Republic. Instead, Anakin left Tatooine with Obi-wan to become the man who betrayed everything that Obi-wan has ever loved or held dear--who threw himself willingly into the dark abyss of power from which no Jedi has ever been redeemed. 

If it weren't for Anakin, Obi-wan wouldn't be here now. The Jedi Order--his job, home, family, and identity all wrapped in one--would still exist. So would the Republic. So would billions of beings slaughtered and enslaved in the name of the new Emperor, whom Anakin chose over his friends. 

Anakin came from here. Anakin should have stayed here. Anakin will never come here again. That's why Obi-wan chose this place. 

One reason, anyway. 

Because if he's honest? The only thing Obi-wan Kenobi hates more than Tatooine is himself.

And what better way to suffer than to return to this arid waste, where it all began? 

***

Neither Owen or Beru ask why he is there on their doorstep with Anakin's infant son in tow; it isn't their way. They don't interrupt as Obi-wan plows through his carefully rehearsed speech explaining Luke's origins and why Anakin's problem is now their problem, nor does he expect them to. Even if he told the full truth, even if he recounted all Anakin's crimes, it wouldn't change their answer. Life on Tatooine is hard, and blood is thicker than water--even on a world where water is scarce and blood is not. 

"I've always wanted a child," Beru says when he's finished, reaching out to take Luke from him. She glances at her husband, who looks away, as if ashamed by his failure to provide his wife with what is clearly the wish of her heart. 

Good. That makes the handover easier. The ethics of forcing a woman to care for her brother-in-law's baby against her will are troubling, and Obi-wan is relieved to sidestep the issue entirely. Luke gurgles happily as she settles him in her arms--another good sign. 

Owen's resentment, on the other hand, is a problem. Obi-wan doesn't need the Force to feel the hole Owen's eyes are boring into his skull. Hospitality to guests and visitors is a key component of civilized life on Tatooine, but there are ways to obey the letter of the law and not the spirit, and Owen clearly knows them all. 

"I suppose you ought to be gettin' along now that you've done what you came here for," Owen says. It's not a question. 

"I reckon so," Obi-wan says, imitating the rhythm and timbre of Owen's vernacular in a futile attempt to blend in. "Might drop by from time to time to see how the kid is doin' and all--" 

"That won't be necessary," Owen says firmly. If there was a door, he would close it in Obi-wan's face, but there are no doors in the desert, a fact both Owen and his unwelcome visitor both regret right now. It doesn't matter--the message is loud and clear all the same. 

Nothing for Obi-wan to do but accept it. "Suit yourself," he says with a bow, and vanishes into the twilight. He looks back long enough to see Beru watching him intently, before her husband tugs her shoulder, pulling her back towards the white adobe dome that marks the entryway to their underground house. 

*** 

He's not the first Jedi to make a life for himself in exile-cum-retirement on Tatooine. Sharad Hett came here when _he_ left the Order thirty years earlier, Force only knows why. Obi-wan's own master was good friends with Hett from their training days, so he heard all the stories, even the embarrassing ones. Who knows, Obi-wan might have even met Hett himself once when he was very young--though if he did, nothing in that encounter has stuck with him. 

He'd seek out the company, but fate is unkind yet again: Sharad Hett died mere weeks before Obi-wan's first meeting with Anakin. In fact, Hett was the reason he and his master came to Tatooine in the first place--Anakin was an accident. The irony is palpable. 

Obi-wan finds an abandoned house poking out of an outcropping where the Jundland Wastes meet the Dune Sea while browsing the old survey maps--a miner's shack from back in the days before the Tuskens rose up and took back the territory. This being Tatooine, it looks exactly the same several hundred years later when he arrives to inspect it in person. It's several hundred kilometers from the nearest outpost of civilization, but less than a hundred from Owen and Beru's farm. The threat of raiding Sand People keep most outsiders away, and there's nothing here that anyone else would want, unless they crave dust, drought, and the thick tang of despair in their mouths. Perfect. 

He sweeps out the sand over several days, and sets up camp. He doesn't need much: a bedroll, some 'vaporators, a chest for Anakin's lightsaber and other items to valuable to throw away, but too painful to leave out in the open. He cooks simple meals over an open flame, trying not to remember the acrid stench of burning flesh, Anakin's screams as the fire consumes him. How Anakin cursed him as he fled: traitor, thief, liar, coward. 

Obi-wan should have killed him, should have put him out of his misery. Instead, he walked away, lest his own rage and grief consume him in the same way they consumed Anakin. Whether directly or indirectly, Anakin had murdered everyone Obi-wan had ever loved. It's only just that he should suffer in agony before he died. 

_No mercy for you, Anakin. No mercy._

He squares his shoulders against the dark, as if such thoughts and gestures can ward off the pain. It doesn't help. He extinguishes the flame and switches to ration bars instead. 

And the biggest question of all remains: now what? 

***

"Where do younglings come from?"

Maks Leem, the Gran dormitory master, wrinkles all three sets of eyebrows in amusement at his question. "Well, my dear charge, when two beings love each other very much, they might choose to express it physically by creating a smaller version of themselves--"

"Er, I mean--" Obi-wan says, desperate to sidestep the embarrassing lecture he's already heard once before. "Why don't Jedi have children themselves? Why do they always come from the outside on the search ships?" 

"Ah, I see now," Maks Leem says with a smile. "The Jedi let the Force go where it will, to whom it will. We do not control it. Sometimes, the Force may run in family lines--but just as often, it does not. We are no dynasty, no caste. We accept all who are able and willing to serve into our family. We do not breed for it the way Master Plett breeds his vine-silks to always run true to his desired ends." She clucks in amusement. "Can you even imagine?" 

In his memory, five-year-old Obi-wan nods. In the present, a hard, sharp vibroblade twists in his guts as intuition asserts itself. Certain details snap into focus; a question asked to a frightened woman silhouetted against the sunset in a luxury apartment on Coruscant, replays in his mind: "Anakin's the father, isn't he?" 

That young desert boy with the shining power grew up to be turned and twisted by the Dark Side, and devoured himself and the whole galaxy in service to his Sith master, to feed a ravening hunger that can never be filled. This is _why_ Yoda says they must wait, why they must hide until the time is right. They are waiting for Luke to grow up, to become what his father could not. 

Obi-wan's vigil here is penance, a chance to redeem himself by watching over Luke to ensure the child's safety. But he can do more than that: he can guide Luke in the ways of the Force, or at least set him on the path to the Light. 

In Luke, Obi-wan has a second chance. For though the Force is a tiny spark in the child now, it will grow to a strength to rival his father's--and maybe beyond. 

No one, not even Yoda, can match Palpatine and Anakin at once. Only Luke--and perhaps his sister, Obi-wan still isn't sure about that one--will be strong enough to do what must be done. 

_I'm sorry, Luke. I won't let history repeat itself. I won't fail you now, the way I failed your father. And when you're ready, I will explain what you must know to defeat him._

But despite the bravado, he is afraid. The future is shifting, uncertain, treacherous as sun and sand, and his faith in destiny, in the inevitable triumph of good over evil and life over death, has been sorely tested of late. 

***

There are a surprising number of visitors for a hut in the middle of nowhere. None of them are human, of course. 

The Jawas show up in the first week. The massive sandcrawler parked outside isn't subtle--did they see smoke from his little fires and rush here in hopes of an easy mark for their bargains? He doesn't speak their language, but it doesn't matter--between their broken Basic and his inspired pantomimes, they communicate well enough. He buys a hodgepodge of 'vaporator parts, more out of astonishment than necessity. Pleased by the jingle of credits in their gloved hands, the cloaked aliens chatter excitedly among themselves, their bright eyes glowing orange-gold behind the shadows of their hoods. 

The boldest one steps forward and points to themself in introduction. "N'kez." 

"Obi-wan," he says reflexively, imitating the gesture. 

"Bwen," the Jawa squeaks back. Certain vowels are hard for them, and after several rounds of frustrated back and forth, Obi-wan gives up trying to correct them. 

"Fine. Fine," he says, throwing his hands in the air. " _Ben,_ then." It'll have to do. 

N'kez chuckles in relief, nodding in satisfaction. "Bwen! Bwen!" 

"Bwen! Bwen! Bwen!" the other Jawas chant in unison as N'kez extends a hand. Not knowing else what to do, Obi-wan shakes it, and the Jawas dissolve into a flurry of giggles as they scuttle away. 

The sandcrawler rolls off, wobbling as it turns to avoid the rocky crags of the Jundland in favor of the shifting sands of the Dune Sea. Obi-wan stares after them until the crawler is a distant speck floating on the edge of the horizon, shaking his head in bemusement. He's not sure what just happened, but he doesn't need the Force to know they'll be back with broken droids and half-repaired machinery for him to pick through. 

The Sand People are more subtle guests. He never sees them, but he senses their presence day in and day out. They watch him constantly from the shelter of the canyons, silent and implacable, but they do not attack, so he ignores them. A truce, then, at least for now. 

Conventional wisdom on Tatooine calls them savages, but Obi-wan knows better. The Sand People have survived on this planet longer than anyone else. They know that anything novel is dangerous until proven otherwise. They know how to live with the vast emptiness and scorching suns, skills that he envies. They are not alone. He envies that more. 

The Sand People's presence piques his curiosity. Do they remember Sharad Hett? What stories do they have of this Jedi who fled to the desert? What lessons could they teach him, if only he knew how to ask?

Obi-wan sleeps during the day when the suns are high, and wanders at night, while brilliant stars blaze above, and the gleaming coil of the galaxy swings overhead. There are banthas and krayts, dry quicksand and scorpions, yet he passes through like a ghost, and nothing touches him. The phosphorescent glow of a thousand churning sandworms light up his footsteps, only for both to vanish in the shifting dunes a few moments later.

At night, the Sand People stay in their camps and do not venture out into the darkness after him. Even if they did, Obi-wan is not afraid; even here in this arid, empty wilderness, the Force is his ally. And what could they do to a man who has lost so much, who now has nothing more left to lose? 

That's not quite true, of course. There's Luke--more potential than promise, one loose thread the Emperor must never find lest he corrupt the son as well as the father. And there's one other gift from Master Yoda: a small vial of seeds in a pressure-sealed container he keeps close to his heart, too precious to let aside even for a moment. 

***

Obi-wan stares out the viewports of Bail Organa's flagship, so absorbed in his own thoughts he doesn't notice the diminutive figure approaching him until the Jedi Master stands at his side, one three-fingered hand reaching out to stroke the glass. With his coarse, wispy hair and wrinkled skin, Yoda has always had the appearance of a wizened human elder, but the events of recent weeks has visibly aged him. He limps now from injuries he sustained from his escape from Coruscant, and the stick that he carried with him for decades as a prop is more necessity than ornament than Obi-wan is comfortable with. 

Yoda has been a constant, enduring figure for Obi-wan's entire life--for several generations of Jedi. Yoda's haggard appearance is proof enough that time itself is out of joint--and neither of them have the power to set it right again. 

"Master Kenobi," Yoda says softly."A word I might have with you now?" 

Obi-wan jerks back from his contemplation of the yawning abyss of space. "Of course, Master Yoda. What can I do for you?" 

His voice is harsh and croaked, his tone formal and stiff. He doesn't know how else to be with Yoda now that everything else has been torn away; strict etiquette is a lifeline he falls back on now to get him through. 

"Much has been destroyed that I could not save," Yoda says softly. "Learning, knowledge, wisdom--even _life_ , the most preciouse of all. But one treasure from the Temple I took before I fled. Entrust this to you, I will now. Take this with you to Tatooine, you must." 

He produces a small cloth bag and presses it into Obi-wan's hand. Even as Obi-wan's fingers close around it, something hard and smooth and slippery shifts in his grip and he rocks back, dizzy, as he realizes what the old Jedi has given him. 

"Seeds," he whispers, incredulity warring with the hope that rises in him like the firebird Bail's forces have been painting on their armor. "From the Great Tree in the courtyard. You saved them." 

"Right are you, Master Kenobi." Yoda leans on his staff, contemplating the heavens. "Grown there for thousands of years, the Tree has--another before that, and another before that one, all the way back to the dawn of the Republic and the birth of the Jedi themselves. Where the Jedi are, the trees must also be. And end with us, they must not, if true to our vows we remain." 

"Master, you cannot entrust me with this," Obi-wan stammers, consumed by sudden panic. "I'm not worthy. How can you give this to me now? After how I've failed you--and everyone?" 

Yoda's smile is soft and sad in the starlight. "Fail you did not, Master Kenobi. No more than anyone else. Did what you could, you did. Did what you had to, you did. No more could anyone ask of you." 

"But surely you must take some with you," Obi-wan says, thrusting the pouch back at his companion. "I cannot be our last hope in this, too!" 

The old master's eyes gleam with a familiar stubborness, and for a second, Obi-wan is a five year old caught filching fruit from the kitchen between meals. "Need them where I am going, I _do not_."

"But I'm going to the _desert_ ," Obi-wan insists. His blood is roaring in his ears and his cheeks are aflame with it. "How can I safeguard the trees _there_ \--?" 

"Find a way you will." Yoda is implacable now, unmoveable, and Obi-wan knows better than to argue. "This I believe. If anyone can find a way, you it must be." 

_Convenient, given how I'm the only one left,_ Obi-wan starts to say, but stops. They have so little time left together. Best not to spend it in recriminations and arguments he will regret. There will be time enough for those later, when he is alone. 

"Be well, dear friend," he says instead. "May the Force be with you." 

"You, too." 

***

Life settles into a routine of sorts. He walks, he eats, he sleeps, day in and day out. He cleans, he meditates, he goes through the motions necessary for survival, and no more. Time slides in and out of his fingertips like so many grains of sand, and there is no point in keeping track of the days when every day blurs into sameness, the sky an infinite sea of blue lit by gleaming suns. 

Now and then he goes in to Tosche Station or Anchorhead for supplies, and no one asks questions as long as his credits are good. He is recorded in no census, pays no taxes, and receives no services, and no one pays any attention to the drifter who passes in and out of their lives. Tatooine has a tradition of lone anchorites in search of enlightenment and failed prospectors who don't know when to quit; everyone who looks at him sees what they want to see, not who he actually is. Most people this far out on the Outer Rim have never even heard of Jedi, let alone pick one up out of a line-up. They're too focused on their own survival to wonder if Ben Kenobi is more than what he seems.

Yes, he keeps the Jawa's name for him. It's easier that way, especially as he becomes fluent in their language on repeat visits. But he stubbornly clings to Kenobi among the humans who can pronounce it, unwilling to relinquish that last bit of his identity. It's one of the few things Anakin hasn't taken from him, and even though he swore to be free of attachments, he's loathe to part with it. 

He keeps his distance from Bestine, where the Imperial garrison is headquartered. The troopers there are bored of polishing their armor and rifles, and yearn for excitement that never comes. The local crime lords pay their commander to look the other way, and there's nothing much to do except harass the locals, who bear the indignities in sullen silence. Best to stay clear of what he cannot change, lest he be tempted to interfere. It goes against everything in his traning, but a planet-wide manhunt would be worse, so he stays away, even as the injustice burns in him. 

He watches the sunsets in the evenings, rolling an uneti seed or two on his palm like a talisman to ward off nightmares. Maybe it's his imagination, but when he holds them, he can almost hear the tiny plant inside humming to itself, and it's easier to pretend that he's not alone. 

***

"What do you mean, you're not coming back to us?" It isn't easy to shock Bail Organa, a born politician with an excellent sabacc face, but the senator is surprised enough by Obi-wan's declaration to let his mask slip for a moment. 

"I have to go to Tatooine to take Luke to his family there." 

"Our spies that can do that." 

"They can't hide the way I can. We can't risk any hint of his existence slipping out," Obi-wan counters. 

Sensing defeat, Organa shifts tactics. "All right, that I can accept. But you say you're not coming back after that. That both you and Master Yoda are going into hiding." 

Obi-wan sucks in a breath. "Yes." 

"Why?" 

Why must such a simple question have such a muddled answer? Isn't it enough to know what he must do without having to justify it to others? Why must Organa press him like this? 

"...It's not the right time yet," he manages after a moment. 

"General Kenobi, with all due respect to you and Master Yoda's considerable abilities, that is the craziest thing I have ever heard. I understand if Master Yoda wants to retire--he's nine hundred years old--but you have no such excuse. We need you. I know the last few weeks have been hard for you--they've been hard on everyone--but you're a general in your prime and we need you to fight here to fight the Empire. We need you to stand up to them." 

Technically, Organa is still his commanding officer since the Jedi are under the Senate's jurisdiction--and the Senate still exists, if only as a crippled version of its former self. Under other circumstances, Organa could court-martial him for disobedience, but the old rules no longer apply. Obi-wan shakes his head. "I told you, it's not the right time for me to fight the Empire with you." 

Organa isn't buying it. "How much harder will it be to fight the Empire once its forces have become entrenched? How much harder will it be when there are billions of beings who remember no other form of governance? How much harder will it be to find recruits when all are broken by slavery and oppression, their spirits broken--" 

Bail Organa is a skilled orator. He has to be; he'd never have been elected a Galactic Senator otherwise. But this is too much for Obi-wan to bear right now and he turns on Organa with barely concealed disdain. 

"A pacifist is telling _me_ to go to war? I never thought I'd see the day when Alderaan would be the aggressor!" 

"We didn't start this war--they did!" Organa insists. "And though we may not fight them openly, Alderaan still fights in its own way! No matter how we might appear to acquiesce on the surface, we still defy them wherever we can underground--" 

"Then let me fight my own way," Obi-wan snaps, his patience at an end. "Trust my assessment of the situation--or Master Yoda's, if you can't trust mine. Let me return when the time is right. Or seek me out when you feel you must. You'll know where to find me." 

Organa purses his lips--still skeptical, but unwilling to continue an argument he cannot possibly win. "Very well, then. I'll hold you to that. Your ship will be ready later this afternoon. May the Force be with us all." 

Obi-wan nods, recognizing the dismissal for what it is. Organa is a good man. He doesn't deserve the hand fate has dealt him, with so many allies dead or gone, yet it cannot be helped. He goes his way, and Obi-wan goes his, with the infant Luke in tow. 

It's the last time he and Organa will see each other alive. 

***

Obi-wan pauses in the doorway of the hut, all his senses alert. A veiled figure kneels in the corner, scrabbling at the chest with Anakin's lightsaber. Even as Obi-wan steps forward, the lock clicks open and the stranger roars in triumph, and pulls the hilt from the box. Exhiliration quickly shifts to puzzlement as the figure swings the unfamiliar weapon back and forth--and froze, as if lost in some vision that only they could see. 

Then the moment passes, and the figure rocks back in shock and confusion, flinging the lightsaber away from him, only to catch sight of Obi-wan at last. A bandaged face set with unmoving goggles for eye sockets and a metallic grille in lieu of a mouth marks the intruder as one of the Sand People, and Obi-wan braces himself for a fight as the figure charges at him. Obi-wan sidesteps gracefully, his hand reaching for his own lightsaber--only to pause as the Tusken scrambles through the doorway with a frightened shriek and flees into the night. 

Well. Obi-wan picks up Anakin's lightsaber and places it back in its container, and settles back on his bedroll in bemusement. This is unexpected. 

The smart thing to do would be to find a better hiding spot for anything he wishes to remain unmolested in his absence. Yet somehow he doubts the Sand People will be foolish enough to venture back into his hut again, whether he is present or not. 

***

A lesson:

Obi-wan is six years old, standing in one of the many courtyards of the Jedi Temple. A silvery Twi'lek whose name he doesn't recall is holding a dry bean on his palm, one of the speckled brown-and-white ones he recognizes from chore rotations in the kitchen. It's not Obi-wan's favorite task, but it's not bad, either: all he has to do is spread out the beans on a plate, picking out any clods of dust or stray stones vacuumed up by the mechanical pickers so nobody breaks a tooth. 

Obi-wan wiggles his own front tooth, and is rewarded with a painful, yet satisfying movement in previously stubborn bone. He'd rather it come out whole and intact, not crunched to pieces during dinner the way Roksha's did two months earlier. The only one more surprised than Roksha had been Obi-wan, who didn't even know Rodian teeth could do that. 

Obi-wan stares at the bean in the instructor's palm, certain there is a test here, but not sure where. The instructor smiles toothily, and holds his other hand six inches over the seed. He holds his pose for several minutes, long enough for Obi-wan's attention to wander. 

Then the bean splits in two. The speckled coat pulls back, and a pale white radicle snakes its way downward, even as a green stem surges in the opposite direction, spreading into two round leaves that are quickly eclipsed by bigger, feathery ones with fine foliage that trembles in the breeze--followed shortly thereafter by keeled red flowers that draw a passing flutter-wight over to investigate. 

An admiring coo from the students is followed by a round of applause. 

" _Consitor Sato,_ " the teacher explains. "Plant Surge." He deposits the bean plant carefully in a nearby pot, and beginning to pass out more dry beans to the assembled younglings. "Reach out with the Force, find the seed with your mind, and encourage it to grow." 

Beside Obi-wan, Roksha raises a hand. "What if it doesn't want to?" 

A titter goes up from the assembled students. Who among them doesn't want to grow up? But the teacher only smiles benevolently, as if Roksha's question is a perfectly reasonable one. 

"Ask it and see," he says kindly, meeting Roksha's gaze with a smile. "You're not asking it to do anything outside its nature. You're helping it fulfill its destiny." 

Destiny. Such a loaded word, even at that age. Later, Obi-wan will curse destiny, but right now, the idea of destiny is comforting--exciting, even. He stares at his own bean, doing his best to follow the instructions. 

Nothing happens. 

This is fairly typical, Obi-wan realizes after several frustrated minutes. Most of the others students have come up short as well. Only Roksha has managed anything of note, and even then, only the merest hint of a radicle poking through the cracked seed coat resting on his green palm. Yet the instructor seems pleased. 

"Practice," he says. "Practice." 

Roksha ends up in the AgriCorps, of course. No doubt he's dead along with all the others now because of Obi-wan's failure. He'll probably never know. 

Then the dream changes--for he is dreaming now, he knows that now--and he is standing in a box canyon with redrock walls, a shaft of sunlight filtering through the narrow slit of sky above him. Water pools at his feet, and the rustle of uneti leaves in his ears, their laughter and chatter in his mind. 

_Wake us,_ they call, _wake us, wake us, wake us. Bring us to life--life--_

After so much fire, death, and bloodshed--after explosions and betrayal in the darkness, screams and shadows haunting waking and sleeping--how can he refuse? 

_I'm coming,_ he calls to them. _Wait for me, wait for me, I'm coming--_

***

He wakes gasping and sweating, mouth dry as the sands outside, which is no analogy--there's grit in his mouth that wasn't there when he went to sleep. He spits it out, his fingers reaching instinctively for the precious bag of uneti seeds tucked away in his sleeves. Still there. Good. 

He lurches out of his sleep-sack, brews caf so strong it could burn his eyes out, but he need the steadying influence of drugs to calm him now. A vice, yes, but a forgivable one. What's Yoda going to do, rap his knuckles about it?

 _Potting mix,_ he thinks, as the caf works its magic and the hut sharpens in focus. Trees can't grow in sand, can they? Their roots need some sort of medium that can hold water. Hydroponics would work if he salvaged more 'vaporators and pumped in the right mix of nutrients, but any system he concocted would be makeshift and fragile, and he's not sure it's worth the risk. What does Owen do? 

Even were it not culturally taboo, he wouldn't ask Owen for anything. It's stupid to have pride in a situation like this, but there it is. 

Beru, though--

Beru might tell him, if he phrases it in a way that isn't a question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maks Leem is a Jedi master featured in Yoda: Dark Rendezvous by Sean Stewart. Roksha, the unnamed Twi'lek are my inventions, and N'kez the Jawa are my inventions. The Sharad Hett and as-yet-unnamed Tusken Raider's stories are based on the Star Wars: Outlander comics from Dark Horse.


	2. Chapter 2

He waits until Owen goes out to tend the 'vaporators and Luke is napping so he can catch Beru alone. She's surprised to see him, of course, but she doesn't shoot him when he steps into view, and she doesn't laugh when he explains his vision, only raises an eyebrow. That's a good start. 

"Hard task you've set for yourself," is her only comment. 

"Is that a problem?" 

She frowns, and he realizes his faux pas even as she graciously ignores it. "No. No problem. Just--" She pauses for a moment, thinking. She's a good woman, strong and competent--and kind, too. Owen's a lucky man. So is Luke. "I'll write out a list of what you'll need," she says at last. 

He nods, grateful. When she invites him to stay for lunch, he doesn't turn it down. 

***

The trip to Naboo is not Obi-wan's first clandestine diplomatic mission since Master Qui-Gon took him under his wing, but it is the most memorable one. Poison gas and a planet-wide invasion certainly have a way of sticking in one's mind, as does fleeing the system with its democratically elected queen not long afterwards. But their ship is crippled from damage incurred in running the blockade out of Naboo, which presents a problem. Where can they restock and restore long enough to make repairs to get them to Coruscant without drawing undue attention to themselves and their charges? 

"Tatooine," Qui-Gon says firmly, as he scans the possible options on the ship's computer. "My old friend Sharad Hett should be able to help us if we can find him. I have trusted him many times over with my life; he knows how to keep his mouth shut, and the planet is far enough out of Trade Federation territory that we should remain unmolested." 

The Naboo queen and her compatriots aren't happy with this decision, but the course is set, and they arrive on Tatooine without incident. They find a docking bay on the edge of the town of Mos Espa where they can keep a low profile without exhausting their meager supply of credits, and settle in. Master Qui-Gon and one of the queen's agents go in search of his old friend and spare parts while Obi-wan remains behind to guard the ship and entertain the ladies. He returns three days later with news of Hett's death at Tusken hands, a slightly used T-14 hyperdrive generator, and a small blond waif who stares up at Obi-wan with wide eyes. 

"Obi-wan Kenobi, meet Anakin Skywalker," his master says by way of introduction as he strides past. 

"Hi! You're a Jedi, too, aren't you? Pleased to meet you," the boy says cheerfully, extending a hand for a startled Obi-wan to shake. 

The informality is a shock, as is the electric crackle that sparks between them as their fingers touch. Only two decades of Jedi training keeps Obi-wan from yanking his hand away in surprise. Instead, he blinks, and glances over at his master, who smiles and says nothing. 

"I see you had quite an adventure," Obi-wan announces to no one in particular. The queen's agent shakes her head at his understatement, and vanishes into the ship to report to her mistress. 

"You bet! It was _fantastic_!" the boy says. "I can't believe I'm going to be a Jedi! I've always wanted to see the stars up-close and travel to other worlds!" 

What? Obi-wan looks over to gage his master's reaction, but Qui-Gon only hums to himself in perfect serenity. No help from that quarter. 

Obi-wan straightens, and decides to take the boy at his word. "Well, then. No time to waste." He shoots his master a look of _you had better explain this later_ over Anakin's head as he accepts the parts. "That hyperdrive isn't going to fix itself. We'd best get on with it."

Of course, Anakin insists on assisting with repairs, and ends up doing most of the work while Obi-wan looks on in astonishment. Whatever this kid is, he's a mechanical genius. Their ship is up and running again in record time. 

Obi-wan spends the trip to Coruscant watching Anakin out of the corner of his eyes. At first, Anakin ensconces himself by the main viewports so he can see everything. Only when they make the jump to hyperspace does he sleep at last, still pressed against the viewport, while Qui-Gon explains the long stretch of coincidences that lead to his fateful meeting with this ex-junkyard slave whose presence ripples with power. 

"The Chosen One," Obi-wan said when the tale is complete. "Master, you really think _he_ is the one who will bring balance to the Force?" 

Qui-Gon nods. "I do." 

"What does that even mean, anyway?" 

Qui-Gon does not answer. 

Prophecies are a strange thing. They never work out the way you want them to. Yet Qui-Gon's belief in Anakin is unshakeable, and Obi-wan is swept along in his wake, never questioning it further. If he had, would the Jedi Order still exist now? Would the Republic? 

There is no way to know. 

***

When the sandcrawler come around again, he buys more 'vaporator parts, to the intense excitement of N'kez and his comrades. By this time, Obi-wan is fluent enough in their language to explain what he's looking for, though his accent is atrocious. He suspects N'kez humors him in hopes of a getting better deal, but decides not to question it. 

He acquires the rest of the supplies piecemeal in trips to Anchorhead and Tosche Station, spread out in time and space so no one wonders why the crazy hermit of the Dune Sea is investing heavily in agricultural parts. Not that anyone would question it--this is Tatooine, after all--but Obi-wan sees no reason to draw attention to himself, even on seemingly innocuous matters. 

He talks to himself, coaching himself through the set-up of self-watering pots and grow-lights on automatic timers, making do with sheer stubbornness where his technical skills fall short. The closer he gets to finishing, the more his anxiety grows. 

It takes days to piece it all together, and when everything's up and running at last, he's so nervous, he can barely contain his shaking. The little brown lizard that lives in the wall flicks its blue tongue in and out, in and out, and skitters away when he draws too close. 

He is afraid of failure--afraid he will bring out the end of the unetis, just as he brought about the end of the Jedi. His fault, all of it. Yes, Yoda trusts him, but Yoda is far away, and Obi-wan is alone with buzzing whispers of calamity and disaster. While the seeds are dormant, he can maintain the status quo; there is no going back if he wakes them and they die. Yet he cannot linger in limbo forever. 

Finally, he calms himself enough to settle on his meditation cushion, his legs crossed, his back straight, his hips over knees, just like Maks Leem taught him when he was three years old. He hasn't thought about his posture in decades, but he thinks about it now, forcing himself to study every sensation as if it were the first time. 

"All right," he says aloud, to nothing and no one in particular. He blinks once, twice to clear the sand from his eyes. He fishes the pouch of seeds out and spreads them out on his palm, their weight heavy and solid on his palm. 

He imagines Yoda's fateful visit to the ancient uneti, one elder to another, guided by some hunch to save what he could. Obi-wan has never seen the tree flower, let alone bear fruit--it must have happened when he was off-planet, removed from the day-to-day business of the Temple during the clamor and chaos of the Clone Wars. He missed a lot that way. 

They all missed so much that way. And they all paid the price for it. 

***

Anakin finds Coruscant new and strange, but everything is new and strange for Anakin now--going from the Outer Rim to the capital of the Republic is guaranteed to trigger massive culture shock even in the most well-adjusted mind. Still, Anakin holds up remarkably well under the onslaught of so many beings and sensations, though Obi-wan doesn't need the Force to read the amazement perpetually shining in his eyes. Coruscant is Tatooine's opposite in every way: glittering and glossy, sophisticated and cosmopolitan, a jungle of ferroconcrete and durasteel, sparkling glass towers and streaming air speeders, pulsing with the activities of billions of beings all jammed together at close quarters. Having grown up here, Obi-wan takes it all for granted, but watching Anakin is like experiencing it all for the first time again. 

Qui-Gon goes to address the Council immediately upon their arrival, leaving Obi-wan to give Anakin a tour of the Temple. Anakin greets everything with exclamations of wonder, but the ancient uneti tree in the Courtyard, its feathery green needles shining in the afternoon light, leaves him stunned into silence for a several long moments before he turns to Obi-wan with a frown. 

"It's... _talking_ to me." He squints his eyes in concentration and stares into the middle distance, listening intently. "I didn't know plants could _talk_." 

"'Grasses and trees, fences and walls demonstrate and exalt the Force for the sake of living beings," " Obi-wan says, quoting one of Yoda's favorite expressions. "It's just that not everyone can hear them. 'And in turn, sentient beings express and unfold their understanding for the sake of grasses and trees, fences and walls.'" 

"Oh." Anakin ponders this, or maybe he's lost in a different conversation with the uneti that Obi-wan is not privy to. Like generations of Jedi before him, Obi-wan grew up with its omnipresent hum in the back of his mind, to the point where it is second nature, but everything is different with Anakin. As Master Yoda is also fond of saying, "A fool sees not the same tree as the wise." He wonders what Anakin sees, and where each of the fall on the spectrum. 

To Obi-wan's eyes, the Great Tree of Coruscant stretches twenty meters towards the sky, dwarfing the two humans standing at its base, but well below the tallest towers of the Temple and the flight path of any ships passing overhead. Its main trunk, broken in a storm several centuries ago, gapes open to reveal a hollow cavern within, but thousands of branches radiate outward from the old wound in every direction, rising up in search of light. Here and there in the canopy, brown-robed children clamor and laugh amongst themselves, swinging to and fro with ease while their teachers look on in amusement. By long-standing tradition, there is an uneti at every Jedi temple or outpost, and this particular tree is said to predate the Temple on Coruscant, watching over generations after generations of Jedi Knights for millennia. This tree is old enough to make a stripling of old Yoda, and yet only the vast orange fungi that cluster around the buttressed base give a hint of any decay lurking within the ancient being. There is intense debate among the more horticulturally inclined masters on whether severe pruning is enough to halt the march of the fungus and promote new growth, but so far nothing has come of it. 

"This place is wonderful," Anakin says as Obi-wan pulls him along at last towards the Room of a Thousand Fountains, where they will wait until Qui-Gon's meeting with the Council is over. "I'm so glad I came! I'm so excited to be here--!" 

Hours later, after news of the Jedi Council's rejection reaches them, Obi-wan finds Anakin and his master thirty meters up in the Great Tree's branches. Even at a distance, he can see the tears gleaming on Anakin's cheeks as he curls up against the trunk. Qui-Gon shakes his head at his apprentice's approach, and Obi-wan nods and moves on, uncertain what will happen next. 

They end up smuggling the Queen and her entourage back to Naboo to fight the invaders. Anakin tags along for the ride because no one else knows what to do with him. Qui-Gon is killed by a Sith assassin, whom Obi-wan kills in turn. The world turns upside down and nothing is ever the same again. 

Qui-Gon's dying wish is for his student to train Anakin, and how can Obi-wan refuse? "He _is_ the Chosen One. He will bring balance to the Force. Train him, Obi-wan. Train him--" he gasps, and he dies as Obi-wan frantically nods his assent, too devastated to speak. 

The Jedi Council eventually settles down and accepts Anakin as one of their own under Obi-wan's tutelage, but the tree remains the calm, still point at the center of the universe, the one place where Anakin never questions he belongs. "It reminds me of home," he says once to Obi-wan in a rare moment of introspection. 

"I don't remember any trees in the desert," Obi-wan teases. 

Anakin frowns slightly. "No. Not that kind of home. My mother," he says, and strides away before a puzzled Obi-wan can reply. He's never met Anakin's mother and doesn't understand why a Jedi might need one, but she died in Anakin's arms recently and that alone would be enough to upset even the most rigid heart. Obi-wan has held far too many dying comrades--not to mention his master--in their last moments to ever question Anakin's grief. So he lets the matter go, drifting away on the wind, and thinks nothing more of it. 

So it is all the more devastating when a scream of pain and terror cuts across the galaxy, ringing in Obi-wan's mind as he battles for his life. The cry of the vast uneti going up in flames is indelibly mingled with Anakin's dying groans, though the two deaths are separated in space and time. So is the security footage of Anakin's lightsaber girdling the massive trunk, interrupting the flow of water and sugars from crown to roots to prevent any hope of resurrection, before and after he slaughtered its Jedi defenders. How fitting the tree's destroyer was burned alive---yet Obi-wan can take no joy in it. Everything hurts too much. 

He exhales sharply, and releases the extraneous thoughts along with the breath; the time for brooding is past. He closes his eyes and _listens_. In the deep silence beyond silence, soft melodic whispers echo in the distance as the seeds sleep, each lost in their own dreams. The oblong brown weights on his palm may look dead, but that is an illusion: they are alive as he is. 

All he has to do is awaken them. 

***

The work is slow and tedious. He has no talent for it, like poor dead Roksha, only the stubbornness and tenacity that comes from having no other hope--and the endless expanse of days. One at a time, he lays the seeds on his palm and nudges them along, slow and steady, as if they were a frightened bantha balking at a loading ramp. _Come. Come out. It's time to grow now. I need you._

He pictures the Great Tree in the main courtyard of the Temple as he remembers it best--the rough peeling bark underneath his hands, the knobby roots popping up out of the ground like boulders, the trunk that stretched up thousands of meters above him, as if straining for the stars. He played hide-and-seek with his fellow younglings behind the the curtain of soft, feathery needles; later, the lower branches became a haven for study and reflection in between his coursework. He always took it for granted that it was there, always had been and always would be. 

_This is what you are destined to be. This is what you can become. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up and grow. It's time._

One by one, the seed coats crack; the barest tip of radicle pushes outward. One by one, he buries them in the moist potting mix, and seals each pot in its little dome, and lets them do the rest of the work on their own. One by one, the whispers in his mind grow louder, as the seeds call out to each other, encouraging their fellows to join them in this strange new world of soil and moisture. 

Three days in, the little brown lizard that lives in the walls is brave enough to venture out from its hiding place to eat the seed on his motionless palm. Obi-wan's hand closes into a fist on instinct as the lizard claws up his knee, and a quick grab with his free hand snags the culprit, though he is bitten twice for his trouble. 

"Go on, little friend," he says, escorting the lizard back to the corner. "Stick to sand crickets or whatever it is you eat over there. Uneti seeds are not for you." 

The lizard hisses and flicks its sky-blue tongue in and out in reproof before vanishing out of sight in a flurry of brown scales. Obi-wan sighs, bandages his bleeding finger, and returns to work. 

Five seeds remain dull, inert, too far gone in their own dreams for him to reach. He sets those aside and continues on with his work. Even as his body tires, his heart soars, thrilled by each slow and weary victory. At last, something to love. At last, something to care about again. 

Did Yoda plan this all along? He wouldn't put it the little green troll to have anticipated just this chain of events, to lure him out of his slough of despond. Still, it's hard to be too angry with the old master, when the silence in his head and heart is broken, and the soft melody of the unetis has settled into the familiar channel in the back of his mind. 

And then the bag is empty, and his task is complete. Twenty seeds lie nestled in their pots under the grow-lamps, tucked away under their protective humidity domes, and the quiet hut is alive with music that only he can hear. 

***

He names the little lizard Siri, after an old friend. After their first encounter, she avoids the seeds, though perhaps the tidbits of jerky and dried mungfruit he leaves for her help her avoid the temptation. 

It takes two weeks for the first seedling to surface, two weeks where he frets and paces, petrified that the uneti's whispers will fall silent at any moment. A string of sandstorms keeps him indoors for most of it, which is just as well--he's afraid to venture too far from the hut even on clear days lest some calamity befall the trees in his absence. The day the first green tip pokes up out of the potting mix, Obi-wan dances himself to exhaustion in joy and relief as the little tree stretches for the light. 

The Sand People still lurk in the canyons, but he suspects the incident with Anakin's lightsaber thoroughly spooked them, as there are no further incidents. So it is a surprise to glance out the doorway one evening and see a Tusken strolling boldly towards him, a gaderiffi stick in one hand. The Tusken pauses a few meters from the entrance, the gaderiffii stick shimmers in their hands, revealing the pale-white glow of a lightsaber. 

Even as Obi-wan freezes in astonishment, the Tusken warrior calls out in accented but intelligible Basic, "So you've returned to finish what you've started, _Jedi_. You will not find our people so easy to mow down this time." Their voice is deep and rough--a man's voice, Obi-wan would say, yet he knows better than to presume on so little evidence. 

"I think you have mistaken me for someone else," Obi-wan says when he's recovered enough to speak, his mind racing. "I have no quarrel with your people, now or in the past. And how is it that you've acquired Sharad Hett's lightsaber without being a Jedi yourself?" 

It's a gamble - asking a question, let alone attempting to bargainwith a Tusken. But Obi-wan's intuition is right--the warrior startles at Hett's name, clearly taken aback by the stranger's knowledge. 

"You knew my father?" 

Now it's Obi-wan's turn to gape in surprise. Are the Tuskens human under their masks? No one on Tatooine has been able to tell him, and the Tuskens certainly aren't forthcoming with any details. Still, this explains the lightsaber. "I... didn't know he had a son," he manages at last.

"My name is A'Sharad Hett--'son of Sharad', in our language. My father taught me much of what he knew, before he was murdered in his prime by our enemies to the east. I took this lightsaber when my father died, along with his name and the leadership of our people. But if you are not the one who slaughtered so many True People, then you must tell how you came by the weapon of the one who did. Don't even try to deny you have it--my disciple H'oarr found it among your belongings, and a true warrior of the People, though he might brag and boast, does not lie." 

In one breath, Obi-wan learns more of Tusken culture than any outlander alive on Tatooine. And the implications of the younger Hett's claims about Anakin are no less troubling. Even in death, there is no escaping Anakin's perfidy. 

_Anakin murdered the Sand People who kidnapped his mother? He told me that she died not long after he rescued her, but I never knew--I never suspected, I--_

_Why didn't he tell me?_

But he knows why Anakin remained silent, and this posthumous betrayal cuts too deep. Obi-wan looks up at Hett's masked face, and the masked man takes a half-step backwards at the fury radiating outwards from his opponent. 

"I killed him and I took it as a trophy," Obi-wan snarls. "He slaughtered my people, too. Search your feelings and you will know I speak truth," he adds, as Hett's hybrid weapon trembles in his hand. 

For once, there's no need to shield against the hum and crackle of lightsaber cutting flesh and Anakin's desperate screams. He thrusts the sensations at Hett like a burning brand, daring the warrior to challenge him. 

Then Hett's lightsaber vanishes, and only the gaffi stick remains. All is quiet for a long moment, save for Obi-wan's labored breathing. 

"Then you have avenged us, and my people honor you for it," Hett says at last. He cocks his head, ever so slightly, in what might be a bow. "And if you were to share what you know of my father, I, A'Sharad Hett, would be grateful for it." 

Obi-wan mimics Hett's gesture in return. "Then be welcome to my home, son of the Jedi, and I will tell you what I know." 

***

They talk for hours, long enough for one moon to set completely and another to rise in its place. Throughout it all, Hett accepts no food or drink--removing the mask is a taboo of the highest order among his people. To Obi-wan's relief, Hett shows no interest in the 'vaporators or the grow light, or the pots with the uneti seeds. Instead, he paces across the room like a prowling nexus, his focus riveted on Obi-wan's every word with laser-like precision. Obi-wan is grateful for Qui-Gon's stories, though he is careful not to let it slip that he comes by his knowledge secondhand. 

Hett shares stories, too, in his own fashion. The Sand People view time as an endless present, in which the deities of the mythic past still shape the world to their own ends, and the landscape is littered with evidence of their exploits, and the proud deeds of generations of their descendants. He shifts in and out from historic epics to autobiography, revealing bits and pieces of a life vastly different from Obi-wan's, yet eerily parallel: his Jedi father dying in his arms, a solemn vow to protect his people, betrayal and hardship on all fronts. Solitary walkabouts and sacred rites intertwine with angry screeds against outlanders and rival clans; anger and rage flare up like wildfire, only to die down to glowing embers in a heartbeat. The Force is strong in Hett, but his technique runs to a vastly different rhythmn--pragmatic and sharp as rock outcrops, but no less controlled and disciplined because of it. 

Of course Hett is also eager to hear more of Obi-wan's duel with his peoples' destroyer. Obi-wan tells Hett as little as he dares, uneasy at the warrior's preoccupation with blood debts and vengeance. In turn, Obi-wan inquires after H'oarr, the young Tusken who rifled through the hut in hopes of counting coup against a mighty wizard, whom Hett is training in the ways of the Force. 

"It is not a strong gift, but it saved his life on more than one occasion," Hett says. "He is only survivor of the Destroyer's attack, the last of his tribe, saved only by being on walkabout away from his people at the time. I took him in, and he is now one of us. He will make a good clan leader when I am gone if he continues along the path of honor."

"I trust he knows better than to come in uninvited now," Obi-wan says dryly. 

Hett laughs--a deep, roaring boom, harsh and keening like a canyon krayt. "Oh, he learned, all right! He'll think twice before counting coup on a wizard again! Perhaps it will encourage him to improve his technique." 

Well. Obi-wan shakes his head. There are layers and layers in Hett's speech, Tusken concepts that Basic is ill-equipped to translate, and Obi-wan cannot catch all the subtleties and shades of meaning here. "Your people have nothing to fear from me, as long as they do not strike the first blow," he says. "I have no quarrel with them. But if they choose to start one with me, they will regret it." 

Unblinking eye sockets reveal no trace of emotions as Hett eyes him warily. Just as Obi-wan wonders if he's gone too far, the other man nods. "Very well," he says. "I will tell my people they provoke the wizard at their peril." 

"Must they provoke the settlers, too?" Obi-wan says, remembering the hushed whispers of Tusken attacks he has heard in Anchorhead and Tosche Station. "Why must your people fight with them, too, at great costs to both sides?" 

Hett draws himself up, as if poised to strike. "Now you speak from your ignorance," he says at last. "Perhaps some day I will explain to you why it can never be so. But my people are no doubt wondering what the fearsome wizard has done with me, and I must now return to them. Perhaps another time." 

"I would be honored, Chieftan," Obi-wan says, slipping into the Tusken's language for the last word. It stings in his throat, all harsh consonants and glottal stops, but Hett seems pleased by Obi-wan's attempt at his language, nodding in agreement as he strides for the door. 

"We will meet again," he agrees--promise or threat, Obi-wan is not sure--and vanishes out into the night.

Illuminated by the soft glow of the growlights, Obi-wan stares after him for a long time, marveling at this most recent twist in his already labyrinthine life. 

***

Now that the trees are here, he chatters to them constantly of nothing in particular, reveling in their delight in the sounds of his voice. He is a pole-star in the constellation of their lives, the unmoving point around which all else revolves, and though their awareness widens and deepens as they mature, he remains the central focus of their attention. 

He finds himself singing as he goes about his chores--old love ballads popular two or three centuries earlier, Coruscant Top 40 hits during the peak of the Clone Wars, children's rhymes he hasn't thought of in years. On a whim, he buys a broken ballichord from a junk shop in Mos Eisley and teaches himself to play, struggling through the chords until his fingers callus and the hand movements are second nature. The endless silence of the desert is broken with music, real and imagined, and like the trees themselves, his wounded soul gradually uncurls with fresh growth, reaching for the light. 

The soft feathery green of their tender needles interrupts the barren brown of sand and stone. The green soothes his eyes, his mind, his soul, and he is refreshed and invigorated in their company. In their presence, he is young again, laughing as he has not laughed in years, and all things are possible. 

For a while, there are no more nightmares. Obi-wan sleeps in peace. 

***

When Obi-wan slips into the kitchen a few weeks later, Beru sets a place at the table for him without comment. Does Owen know of his visits? He doesn't ask and Beru doesn't volunteer--better not to know, he thinks. Meanwhile, Luke is growing in leaps and bounds, with a mass of floppy blond hair that reminds Obi-wan painfully of Anakin. 

"Your project ought to be coming along by now," Beru says as they sit down to lunch. 

"Fine," he says, setting into his stew with gusto. It's more than fine, really, but he's learned the hard way to tak the understated approach with with the human settlers here, lest he scare them off with too much excitement. 

"It must be going _really_ well," Beru observes, not fooled in the slightest. "You're happier than you used to be." 

"Funny how that happens," Obi-wan says, simultaneously pleased and put out by how well she's come to read his moods. 

"Mmm-hmmm," Beru says, failing to hide her smile as she feeds Luke his bottle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obi-wan's quote from Yoda about grasses and trees, fences, and walls, is paraphrased from the writings of Zen master Eihei Dogen. Likewise Yoda's remark, "A fool sees not the same tree as the wise," is a paraphrase from William Blake.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obi-wan and Anakin's conversation about destiny and 'infinite sadness' is directly quoted from one of James Luceno's Clone War novels (I think it's _Labyrinth of Evil_ ), but was too good not to fit in somewhere. Poor Obi-wan. 
> 
> Annileen Calwell, A'Yark, and the village of Dannar's Claim are from _Kenobi_ by John Jackson Miller.

Now Obi-wan measures time in new ways - tender growth on the uneti seedlings, bowls of stew on the Lars' kitchen counter, A'Sharad's hoarse whispers in the darkness, sandcrawler tracks in the dunes. Shifts of light and heat fade in importance with the ebb and flow of relationships that give his life meaning again after a long drought of despair.

The trees grow in leaps and bounds, shooting for the grow-light that serves as their sun with fierce and unbridled optimism. Their humidity domes fill with lush foliage, and their roots stretch downward in mirror image until they reach the bottom of their pots and circle in frustrated coils, testing them for weak points to break free into the wider world.

Obi-wan begrudges his charges nothing, but expanding the domes to accommodate their increasing girth requires much time and ingenuity--not to mention frequent supply runs and extensive consultations with N'kez and his band. As the hut fills with propagation equipment, he faces the dilemma born of his own success. Should he deliberately shape the trees to keep them a manageable size or find some better quarters for them? The decision approaches at a rapid clip, and he is not ready to choose.

It unnerves him to have the remnants of an entire species in his hut, with no backups in case of catastrophe. He doesn't fear interference from the locals, especially not with A'Sharad's tacit backing, but the possibility of failure haunts him. He lost two seedlings to fungus when the moisture system went haywire, and one to a mysterious wasting disease with no discernible cause. He's grateful every day that the rest seem to have shrugged off any problems and grown with that admirable vigor.

As long as the humidity domes and 'vaporators are running properly, the uneti can survive indefinitely in their self-contained worlds. But trees would die in a matter of hours if a breakdown occurred when he wasn't there to correct it. Death by thirst is agonizing and slow; death by drowning not much better. The fear haunts hm, keeps him up at night, tossing and turning while the uneti hum contentedly, lacking the capacity to envision the future. He wishes he had thought through the implications of sowing the seeds long before it came to this point, but there is no turning back now.

One way or another, he'll think of something. One way or another, he'll have to trust in something outside himself. And that is harder now than it used to be after so many betrayals.

***

The first thing Obi-wan does when he returns to Coruscant after Qui-Gon's death is to settle into his assigned quarters on the upper level of the Temple, as befitting his new rank. The second thing he does is have tea with Maks Leem in her room two doors down. Raw and grieving in the aftermath of his master's death and sudden promotion, he needs her kindness and good sense settle his jangled nerves.

Master Leem chews thoughtfully on a sheath of silvergrass while he unburdens himself, her three eyes blinking out sync with each other. Word travels fast in the Temple, and very little of what he says is new to her. Nevertheless, she listens with the same calm, slow patience of her herbivore ancestors, though the Gran are notorious for their dislike of violence, and it is rare in those days for a Jedi to meet their end in open battle. So he catches the barely perceptible twitch at his account of the strange assassin skilled enough to take down a Jedi Master, recognizes that she is struggling with the inevitable cognitive dissonance of long-held beliefs clashing with reality. He feels the same way, and he _lived_ it.

That will change, of course, with the war that even now hovers on the horizon, but neither of them know what Qui-Gon's death is the first blow in a conflict that they don't even know they're fighting. In their innocence, they can call this incident an aberration, rather than the omen it is. Right now, Obi-wan is concerned only with his own petty anxieties: can he live up to his master's expectations? Can he train this mysterious Force-prodigy from Tatooine despite being little more than a Padawan himself?

"What are you most afraid of?" Master Leem asks when he's finished.

"I've never done this before. What if I fail?"

Maks Leem doesn't hesitate for a moment. "You'll do fine. You'll figure it out. I trust your judgment and good sense--and your heart." All three eyes study his face, as if the answers are written in the curve of his cheekbones and the set of his mouth. "You have always had a kind heart. And kindness... kindness is what this boy needs the most from us, now and always."

"Thank you, Master Leem," he says, rising to his feet. He would love to stay longer, but Anakin is waiting for him downstairs, and Anakin--lost, adrift, confused in the aftermath of Qui-Gon's sudden death--needs him right now. "I should go to him, then."

"Please," she demurs, reaching out to catch his arm, "call me Maks. We are colleagues now."

He'll never get used to this informality with someone who knew him as an infant, but he's touched by it all the same. "Very well, Mast--Maks," he says, stumbling over the unfamiliar name."I will remember this."

But she was wrong. Kindness wasn't enough. _He_ wasn't enough. Or maybe Anakin was beyond his help even then. There's no way to know--and even if there was, he's not sure the answer would bring him any comfort.

Maks Leem dies on a top-secret mission to Vjun with Yoda, six months before the fall of the Republic. At the time, Obi-wan is devastated. He never got a chance a chance to say goodbye. Now, though, he is secretly grateful that she died still believing in him, in the power of kindness, that she never witnessed Anakin's betrayal or the destruction of everything she held dear. 

Thank the Force for small mercies, at least.

***

"Haven't seen you much lately," Beru says, when he stops in for a brief visit. She sets the ceramic mug of frothing blue milk down in front of him. Luke, still too young to be left unsupervised, is wrapped around her back with a long cloth while she goes about her chores, and the child sleeps, oblivious to this visit from a stranger out of the desert.

"'Course, I don't blame you, it's more exciting over at Dannar's Claim than it is here these days," she continues, matter-of-fact. "Annileen Calwell's a lovely woman. She could use a good man."

Years of diplomacy Obi-wan's face stays carefully blank at her insinuation. For folks offended by direct questions, he's always impressed by how quickly the local rumor mill snaps into action. Beru's carefully phrased statement is not an unreasonable inference under the circumstances when a single man starts spending time around a widow his same age and species. Were that single man anyone else, it might even be a likely outcome. No chance of that in his case, not that it's worth arguing about it.

"I appreciate the compliment, but Anni and I are just friends," he says with what he hopes is a suitably casual attitude as he accepts the proffered mug. "Her prices for eopie fodder are very reasonable and the homemade bantha biscuits are to die for. I always stop in when I'm in the area."

Beru rolls her eyes as if she can't decide whether to be amused or disgusted by such an artful deflection. "I dunno, gets pretty lonely out there in the Waste. And there are some things a man can't do on his own. No shame in that."

Obi-wan downs his milk in one long swallow and returns the mug with a polite bow. "Duly noted. But I think Ani knows I'm not the type to settle down." He's said it so many times the nickname no longer sticks in his throat the way it once did. 

_I hope she knows. As long as we're clear on that, there's no problem--_

"Huh," says Beru, skeptical, but she smiles at him anyway as she takes back the heavy crockery. Luke stirs, and she reaches her free hand back to stroke the child's hair. "Well, life's full of surprises. Never know when something's going to leap out at you and derail your whole existence."

"That's right," Obi-wan says, thinking of delicate leaves under humidity domes, and the coursing, relentless growth--and the look on ten-year-old Anakin Skywalker's face when his master told him he was going to be a Jedi after all. "Life's funny like that."

***

What could he have done? He thinks about that often, though less often than before the trees came. How could he have known what was to come, when the future is a shifting, elusive thing that no one--not even a being as ancient and wise as Yoda--could be expected to grasp? How could he have done anything other than what he did?

And yet on some level, he _did_ know what was to come, and so did Anakin--the persistent undercurrent that lay underneath their jokes and banter, the unsettling feelings no amount of comaraderie could shake. Qui-Gon believed that Anakin Skywalker was the Chosen One, and Anakin believed it, too, with the zeal of a lonely child with no other dreams left to cling to. And it was that drive, that ambition, that zeal for a great destiny that he believed the Order denied him--coupled with his impressive talents in the Force--that had led inexorably to his downfall.

“I never claimed to be the Chosen One," Anakin says when Obi-wan calls him out on it. "That was Qui-Gon. Even the Council doesn’t believe it anymore, so why should you?”

"Because I think you believe it,” Obi-Wan says, not deterred in the slightest by Anakin's denial. “I think you know in your heart that you’re meant for something extraordinary.”

Anakin rolls his eyes, uncomfortable with his master's persistence, and parries. "And what does your heart tell you _you’re_ meant for, Master?”

"Infinite sadness," he says without thinking.

It's supposed to be a joke. He meant it to be a joke. But even as the words pop out of his mouth, he realizes with a start that he's said more than he meant to. A weight, a texture that feels like prophecy, hangs heavy and ominous in the space between them, and he can't change it, can't take it back, can't do anything except grin like an idiot and pretend it's a joke after all, because there's nothing else he can do to ease the tension.

Anakin stares at him. For once, he has nothing to say in response.

And Obi-wan was right, wasn't he? Anakin was meant for extraordinary things--and threw them all away, plunging Obi-wan's life into more sorrow than he had ever thought possible.

Thank the Force Anakin hadn't killed all the uneti after all. Thank the Force there was some small thing Anakin hadn't touched. Thank the Force there was still hope.

Obi-wan just had to keep going, and keep the trees alive, long enough to see it.

***

When Annileen Calwell invites him to dinner for the second time that week, he turns her down. They've wended their way through their usual conversations--the weather, or lack thereof; complaints about the heat and dust; the exorbitant prices of foreign goods; Annileen's dream of making enough money to get off-planet and attend university, make a better life for herself and her kids--when the invitation zings out of nowhere, like a comet crashing into planetary orbit. He shakes his head and makes his excuses, thinking that she'll take the hint and change the subject.

She doesn't. "Are you sure?" she says, looking past him out the narrow windows of the shop founded by her dead husband in the early days of their marriage. "Suns're gettin' real low--it's not safe to be out after dark these days--"

"I'll be fine," Obi-wan says. He pulls his hood over his face to signal the conversation is officially over.

"But what about the Sand People? They've been steppin' up their raids now that old Plug-Eye is back--"

Plug-Eye is the leader of this particular group of People--distinguished at a distance by the blood-red crystal jammed in one eyepiece of the ubiquitous bandaged mask. This decoration doesn't interfere with their aim, which is excellent, to the intense distress of the inhabitants of Dannar's Claim. He's never met Plug-Eye personally, but the village is alive with rumors, most of which he doubts are true. 

"I'll be fine," he repeats. "I'm too poor and too crazy for the Sand People to bother with."

This is technically true, although it omits the most salient facts, namely that Obi-wan has an understanding with the People and as long as he keeps his part, none of them will attack him. The settlers, who see the People as little more than beasts, can't understand that--nor, he knows now, do they really want to. It's much easier to curse and shoot and destroy others if you tell yourself they're not really sentient, that their lives don't matter. Anileen might be open to the facts, but this isn't the time or place to explain them to her.

"All right," she says, though she follows him out the door as he saddles up his eopie and prepares to ride away into the double twilight, as if her witnessing is enough to keep any rogue Tuskens off his back. "Just--be careful, Ben--"

He looks down at her tenderly. Beru is right--she is a beautiful woman, though the harsh climate and her struggles to keep the store afloat have not been kind to her, just as his own ordeals have done him no favors in the looks department. Ever since he found her out in the dunes with her daughter, the two of them struggling with their dewbacks in a patch of dry quicksand, they've been drawn to each other by some ineffable spark that neither really understands. She's the only person he's met here who yearns for the light of other stars as much as he does, though she's only seen them in holos and dreams. She knows what it's like to lose everything, and yet be forced to carry on for the sake of those who depend on her. She cares about him--not because he's a Jedi, or famous, or powerful, or even family of sorts--but because he's _Ben_. Because she likes him. For no better reason that that. 

She's lonely, and he's lonely, and it's nice, so very nice, not to be alone, to not be Obi-wan, to just be Ben. But he can't stay here in Dannar's Claim, can't be anything other than what he is, and there are parts of him that he doesn't want her to see--not because he doesn't trust her, but because he doesn't trust himself. The last thing he needs is to bring more suffering and pain to this woman who has already suffered so much.

"I'll be careful, Anni," he promises, and rides off. She watches him go and he waves back once before setting his sights on the journey ahead. 

There are five People lurking on the outcrops outside the village, all armed with long-distance repeating slugthrowers, but they ignore him and let him pass unmolested. The rest of the trip passes without incident, though his stomach grumbles and he wishes he'd accepted her offer of dinner after all. Ration bars are a poor substitute for hot stew and homemade bantha biscuits. 

Still, Siri the little brown lizard clambers on his shoulder and hisses contentedly at his return. That's something, at least. And all is quiet and calm as the stars shift overhead and the trees murmur quietly among themselves as night gradually transforms into day. 

***

Like the wind, A'Sharad Hett comes and goes as he pleases, raw and rough and unpredictable, bearing tidings and tales that Obi-wan slowly comes to appreciate. Sometimes H'oarr trails uncomfortably in his master's wake, sulking in the corner, unable to look Obi-wan in the face and never speaking to him directly. 

Eventually, Obi-wan realizes that H'oarr isn't embarassed or frightened--he's angry that the foreign wizard has stolen H'oarr's revenge by dispatching his clans' murderer, but fears to challenge Obi-wan directly. Hett is amused by this, and ignores Obi-wan's pleas to encourage his apprentice to let it go. Life is easier for everyone when H'oarr finally refuses to come at all. 

At Hett's next visit, Obi-wan mentions the raids on Dannar's Claim--"the Blue-Water Vale Ringed by Exposed Earth Bones," as the People call it in their language. As usual, Hett meets this statement with silence, though he is visibly disturbed by Obi-wan's heavily edited description of Plug-Eye.

"Ah," he says at last, after a suitable interval. "A'Yark. My... parent's sib--"

"Uncle? Aunt?" Obi-wan supplies helpfully. 

"Yes. Aunt. She would have been War Leader in my stead, had I not risen to my father's place. She... comes and goes as she pleases. Many of our folk go with her."

Obi-wan raises an eyebrow. He had no idea the political situation among the People was so fraught. "They plot against you?"

"No." Hett is firm about that. "She does not contest my claim, has no desire to lead in my place. But she lost her sight and her children in the war that claimed my father and... it maddens her to see the perpetrators go unpunished. So she attacks when she spies weakness. Those who agree assist her."

"Musn't she obey the War Leader's orders?"

"If I order it, then yes, she must obey or die or walk clan-less and alone. But I am neither for or against what she does. I believe the settlers will not triumph, for they are fighting with the land, and we are not. There is no need to spill our own blood when the land will kill them for us; all we must do is endure until they are gone. Such was my father's view, which is mine also. But I will not stop her, either, for she is right that the blood debt is owed, and it is fair and right for it to be paid in full."

Obi-wan sighs. Try as he might, he's never been able to get Hett to understand that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. Hett believes that in the world of the blind, the one eyed-man--or woman, in A'Yark's case--is in the right. 

"Can't you ask her to ease off The last thing your people need is another war--"

Hett shakes his head, stern and implacable. "I cannot."

The old stalemate. "Why?"

Silence stretches out between them. "I suppose it is time," Hett says at last. "There is something you must see if you are to understand. I will show you. Come with me."

Wordlessly, Obi-wan follows. 

***

They ride for hours in the darkness over the dunes, the stars circling overhead around the milky arm of the galaxy above. As they travel, the silence is broken only by the soft tread of heavy bantha steps in the sand, and Hett's hoarse voice singing the stories of the landscape as they pass, the dreaming, the legends, the history and myth all blurring into the present moment in an unbroken chain. Obi-wan's throat grows dry and Hett hands him the lower part of a mask, with filters and tubes to pull moisture from the air and into his body, which he gratefully accepts. 

Eventually, they leave the open dunes behind for the twisting canyons of the Jundland Wastes. Redrock stone shimmers in the starlight, dark and shadowed before the moons' rise, then washed-out and pale in the reflected glow. A krayt dragon calls in the distance and the bantha whuffs nervously underneath it, but Hett strokes its flank and it settles back to its steady pace again. Obi-wan senses the sky grows lighter long before the suns are high enough to flood the canyons with light and turn the rock blood-red again, throbbing like a beating heart. 

Eventually, they reach a spot where the canyon narrows, and Hett gestures for them to dismount and lead the bantha on foot.

"There are other ways in," he said engmatically, "but this will do for now." 

_Other ways where?_ Obi-wan wants to ask, but then they turn a corner, and he understands. 

Carved into the side of the canyon ahead of them was a massive building carved out out of the redrock, as if the architects of Coruscant had re-created one of the capital's wonders here in the desert of this distant, dusty world, completely out of place with the raw wildness of its surroundings. Topped by three rounded towers and covered with complex geometric designs, the vast entrance was supported by ridged columns a dozen meters high, accessible by a cascade of stone steps that descended all the way to the canyon floor. It was beautiful, elegant, refined--and unlike anything he had ever seen on Tatooine.

"Who made this?" he whispers. " _How--_?" 

"We did," Hett says, not offended in the slightest. "Long ago, our ancestors carved this city out of the earth itself when they fixed ourselves in one place. But they were wrong to do so. The waters dried up, the earth shook, and their children remembered that only in motion can true safety reside, and that only for a fleeting moment. The sands shift, and the winds shift and so do we, never abiding in one place for more than a few nights at a time. But every child of the People comes here on walkabout, to remember who we are and where we came from--why we live on the wind, and why we must oppose those who do not not."

Obi-wan is too stunned by the opulence, by the magnificence of this canyon city, to form any coherent reply. He had no idea. The settlers call the Sand People savages, but if they only knew--

"Do you understand now?" Hett asks quietly in his ear.

He does and he doesn't, but he nods anyway, because he has no words now that would be enough, nor would Hett be willing to hear him if he did. He understands the People now more than any outsider alive on this planet, because he has seen what they accomplished, what they remember and what they gave up, of their own free will, to follow a different path. 

Hett has shown him this so that he understands that peace is not an option, only uneasy stalemate and annihilation of one side or the other. And Hett is right that the People know how to live with the vagaries of the desert, while the settlers must fight it at every moment in order to survive. 

He doesn't like it, but he accepts that is the way it must be--for now, anyway. 

***

Now that Hett has shown him the way, he goes there often on his own to stare in slack-jawed wonder as he explores the abandoned buildings. If the People are watching him, they do not show themselves and Hett does not comment on it, perhaps content to have made his point clear. He wanders through the ancient city with his water-tube and breathing mask, resting in the shadows when the heat becomes too much. He is seized by a restlessness he doesn't understand, as if this place holds the secrets of the Peoples' psyche that will allow him to negotiate true peace at last. 

Thus he stumbles across the spring several weeks later while tracing the old acqueduct system up the canyon. Faced with a dead end, he doesn't even notice the significance of his find until something wet and cool soaks through his boots and he looks down to see the water pooling underneath his feet. Not much, only an inch or so deep--but clear and cold as if it has been pulled directly from underground and he realizes he is standing in the lifeblood of the ancient city that the People have long since abandoned. 

He staggers back in shock, pulls the breathing tube from his mouth, splashing his face as if he can't believe what he's looking at. It's real, it's real, it's water, precious life-giving water, with a faint metallic taste to it, but water nonetheless. It takes almost an hour of gleeful wonder before he's able to think rationally again, when it hits him that he's seen this place before, in his vision the night he realized he must germinate the uneti no matter the cost. 

They could grow here. They could. It's a wild and crazy idea, but even as the thought crosses his mind, he knows this is the answer he's been looking for. The uneti would be safe here, sheltered, far from the prying eyes of the Empire, the settlers, or even the People. There's water and shade and light here, everything they need. All he has to do is plant them. 

He laughs all the way back the hut at the audacity of his plan, and the uneti sense his wildness and respond with eager inquiries. _Light? Growth? Place? Expansion? We want to grow, we want to live, we want to grow--_

He shows them the pool in his mind, the images of rock and water and light blending together in rapid succession. _Can you live here? Would you like it?_

He knows their answer even before they speak, magnified seventeen times over: _Yes, yes, yes, yes_. 

So that's decided, then. Everything after that is a matter of logistics. 

One by one, he hauls each glistening humidity dome out into the canyon. One by one, he plucks each seedling free, and buries its roots in wet sand, stroking the leaves as they strive for the light. 

Slowly, the voices inside his hut fade, while the chorus in the distant canyon grows. 

Life's lonelier than it used to be, he thinks, as he sits with the handful of trees he has yet to plan, Siri the lizard purring quietly on his palm. But part of growing up, growing out, means letting go. It's better that he sets them free now, while he's still around to take care of them. 

Besides, it's not as if distance matters to the uneti. Not when they have the Force. Awake or asleep, all he has to do to walk among them is close his eyes and listen. 

Still, the next time Annileen Calwell invites him to dinner, he accepts.


	4. Chapter 4

The skies of Mustafar are veiled in perpetual shadow. All light comes from the dull red glow of lava pouring in a molten river below him. Smoke and sweat blur his vision as he stands on his perch of volcanic rock; ash chokes his mouth, and his throat is raw and red from the corrosive gases in the atmosphere. On Mustafar, the very air burns, worthy of a planet ripped straight from a thousand cultures' version of hell. 

Obi-wan knows better. Mustafar is not hell, not even close. Hell is the searing pain in his chest as he stares down at the crumpled, mutilated form of his dearest friend, who has betrayed everyone and everything they both hold dear--all for a lie with no more substance than the vapors swirling around them. Hell is the loathing in Anakin Skywalker's rheumy eyes as he scrabbles helplessly against the superheated rock, while his beloved teacher--mentor-- _friend_ \--stands by and does nothing to help him. 

After all, Obi-wan is the one who did this to him. It seems only right to bear witness to the end. 

Anakin doesn't beg, doesn't plead, doesn't say a word as he crawls forward, and Obi-wan's control, already so fragile and tenuous, shatters. "You were the Chosen One! It was said you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance the Force, not leave it in darkness!" 

He wants to scratch out the furious reproach in Anakin's eyes, the loathing that radiates off him in a toxic cloud. Instead he stoops, picks up the lightsaber that lies at his feet before the crystal inside overheats and explodes. It's Anakin's weapon, the one that he made under Obi-wan's supervision all those years ago. Obi-wan chokes up as he clips it to his belt, hacking and sputtering from the atmosphere as well as grief. 

It shouldn't be like this. It wasn't suppose to be like this. 

Yet he watches the most important person in his life writhe in agony--and lets it happen. There is nothing else to do, nothing he can do that will take the pain away, and he doesn't even try.

He can't offer Anakin the mercy of a clean death, a quick death in the heat of battle anymore. And after the slaughter he saw in the Temple, he's not sure he wants to. 

"I HATE YOU!" Anakin howls, an animal cry of pain and fury barely intelligible as words. His mechanical arm loses purchase, and he skitters back down the slope towards the fiery river of lava below. 

"You were my brother, Anakin," Obi-wan says softly. Tears stream down his face; the wind whips at his hair. There is no punishment worse than this, nothing more terrible can befall him. He wishes he were dead, but he can't die, not now, not after all that's happened. Not after all that Anakin's done. Not when there are so few of them left. 

He says now what he should have said to Anakin before, what he _did_ say in a thousand small and subtle ways over the years. "I loved you!" he sobs, heedless of dignity, of non-attachment, of any moral code. None of that matters now; the man he loves is already gone, gone, gone beyond, devoured by the Dark Side, this ghastly simulacrum at his feet a poor replacement. 

The past tense registers in Anakin's face; it cuts through the hate like a lightsaber piercing flesh. For a second, the old Anakin stares back at him--the laughing, playful adolescent who flew rings around him when they raced speeders through the alleyways of Coruscant so as not to be late for dinner at the Temple; the cheerful child leaving home for the first time, convinced he was destined for greatness. Then Anakin's mutilated leg ignites, and all innocence is gone as Darth Vader screams. 

It happens so fast. Obi-wan blinks, looks down at his hands, forces himself to look up as Vader's torso vanishes in a curtain of fire. The last thing to burn is Vader's face, his gaze never leaving Obi-wan's. He pushes himself forward, the mechanical hand reaching out with imploring palm, fighting to the very end. 

Even then, Darth Vader doesn't die. Obi-wan will never, ever forget the gasping squeals as the end approaches, tapering off into long, slow sobs.Then his vision blurs, and he realizes, light-headed with adrenaline and volcanic fumes, that he will die here too if he doesn't get to shelter quickly. He can't die now, not here, not like this--

He knows himself a coward for turning away, for not seeing this through, but there is no choice. He turns, staggering like a drunkard across the broken boulderfield--

Bright and gleaming, the desert rushes up to meet him. Hot wind whips at his hair, pulling the column of acrid smoke rising from the Lars' homestead into a sideways plume. The all-too-familiar odor of charred flesh assaults him, and he whirls, searching for its source. The earthen walls don't burn, but its contents are flammable enough, and so are the steaming skeletons lying face down in the sand--

_No_. 

Obi-wan is halfway out the door, lightsaber in hand, robe half-pulled over his shoulder, before he wakes. He stumbles over one of the two remaining humidity domes on the floor, but catches himself in time, breathing hard at his narrow escape. The tree stirs sleepily at the unexpected vibrations, then recognizes Obi-wan's presence, and subsides with the quiet but unmistakable dismissal of _Mammalian dormancy hallucination_. 

No. No. Not _just_ a hallucination. Obi-wan's stomach twists in the tremor that he's learned to associate with prescience over the years. He secures his robe, clips his lightsaber to his belt, and is out the door without another moment's hesitation. 

In his vision, it was mid-day, the twin suns high in a double noon. Now it is night, the familiar constellations wheeling and diving overhead as the world turns. 

He knows from long experience he can make it to the Lars homestead by dawn. 

As before, with Anakin, he has only one prayer: _Please let me be in time._

***

Dawn on Tatooine is an awesome sight, two gleaming suns rising over the sands, but Obi-wan's only interest is in the gradually approaching lump on the horizon that marks the Lars' moisture farm--still mercifully intact. As he urges his eopie forward, he realizes that what he mistook for new 'vaporators are actually a line of banthas, and the scattered rocks are robed People crouched on the rim overlooking the underground courtyard with slugthrowers at the ready. They must have disabled the perimeter alarms somehow, or else they'd've never made it this far undetected. 

Obi-wan curses, praying that these folk are under Hett's influence, and he can end this without bloodshed on either side. He wrecks his mind for anything that will lead to the People dispersing peacefully--anything, so long as it doesn't lead to that nighmarish track in his visions, the compound in ruins, Anakin's son dead. Anything but that. 

But even as he approaches, the People sense the movements of the eopie through the ground and turn to face him. Blood-red light from the rising sun gleams against a blood-red crystal jammed into their masks mask, and he is face to face with the last being he wishes to find here: A'Yark, Old Plug-Eye herself. 

_Not here, not here, why HERE, she was supposed to be still over at Dannar's Claim where there's water and weapons and people, not HERE--_

"Hold!" Obi-wan roars in the language of the People as he slides off the eopie's back, his lightsaber a blaze of blue-white amidst the sea of red sunlight and sand. 

A'Yark thrusts the slugthrower up to her shoulder and fires at him. 

She must have seen her brother and her nephew practice with their lightsabers. She must have known what the effect would be... right? 

Slugthrowers shoot jagged chunks of metal, not energy quanta, but the lightsaber has no trouble deflecting them. He closes the gap with a berserker's rage, and the People scatter before him like the wind--even A'Yark. Then he's at the lip of the compound, as the People regroup behind him, blocking off every exit blocked with their battered slugthrowers. He licks his lip, breathing heavily, as they stare at each other in frozen tableau. 

Time to negotiate. 

"A'Yark!" He screams at her in an ungrammatical blend of what he can remember of her language, throwing in Basic where he can't and trusting the Force to carry what meaning it can. "A'Yark! I grieve with you for your lost children, but killing settlers won't bring him back! You must end this here or else bring down a curse on you and your people forever!" 

The People don't believe in forgiveness, exactly, but they do believe in curses, and Obi-wan plans to use this bias for all it's worth. It doesn't matter what he says, what she believes, as long as Luke and Beru and Owen are safe. Nothing matters, as long as he can convince the People to stay away from this place. 

"A'Yark! I am a wizard, more powerful than you can imagine! None of your people cannot win against me! Go back now and there will be no shame, no dishonor! Fight me and suffer my wrath!" 

She hesitates. For a second, he thinks he's won, as she lowers her slugthrower a fraction of an inch. Then she jerks it back up with a mocking laugh.

"Our War Leader has a flaming sword of his own!" she shouts back. "We do not fear yours! It is an insult to the language of the People for it to cross your lips! We shall not suffer your abominations any longer! You will die here, and I will kill you myself!"

Obi-wan smiles sadly. So much for asking nicely. 

Then he steps backwards off the cliff into the air, extinguishing his lightsaber as he falls. 

A hail of slugthrower bolts scream past him, as he lands with a leaping roll in the courtyard below and rises to his feet. Above him, the People howl and scream in rage, but it will take them a few seconds to regroup and assail him from the ridge. He has all the time he needs to be ready for them when they come--

Except that Luke is already there in front of him, staring with those wide blue eyes so much like Anakin's own. 

And instead of aiming at _him_ , A'Yark aims her slugthrower at the child--one not much older than her own son was when he died in the war against the settlers. 

" _No_ \--" 

There's no time to think, no time to plan. There is only the instinct, and the Force, channeled by long practice into his subconscious, so his impulse yields results. He drops the lightsaber and dives for Luke, to shield him with his body, even as he _pushes_ outward with the Force towards their attackers. 

The ground shakes. The People scream. A'Yark slips, and misfires; her slugthrower is wrenched from her hands of its own will, even as she gropes for desperately for it. 

And then two more slugthrower bolts come from behind him. 

The Peoples' resolve breaks. They scatter in seconds, abruptly and eerily silent. Then a heart-wrenching cry from Obi-wan's forgotten eopie is drowned by the sudden bugling of banthas. 

And then everything is quiet again, except for Obi-wan's frantically beating heart, and that of the child he's clutching to his chest. 

"Get away from the boy, you old sand rat, or I'll shoot you, too," Owen Lars says in his ear, slow and calm and furious, in a tone that brooks no arguments. 

Obi-wan sits up gingerly, and releases Luke gently to the ground. He turns to face Owen, rubbing the grit out of his eyes at he does so. Then Beru is running towards them, scooping up a wide-eyed Luke in her arms, and fussing at him in anger blended heavily with relief. 

"I don't know what you think you're doing, but I don't want to see you poking your nose around here again," Owen continues, his slugthrower still pointed at Obi-wan, even as Beru tugs at her husband's arms

"Owen--he was trying to help, Owen--Luke could have _died_ if he hadn't--" 

"Luke ought to have been in bed!" Owen shouts, pushing her hands away to jab accusingly at Obi-wan. "And why do you think _he_ was here in the first place? Brought the Sand People right to us--" 

Obi-wan hesitates. Owen's accusations are ridiculous--but they just might be true. Why _did_ the People come here? He knew they watched him; had they seen him come here in secret over and over again, and decide to investigate? What had A'yark hoped to accomplish here? 

Deep in his heart, he fears he already knows the answer. 

"See?" Owen says. "He doesn't deny it!" 

Obi-wan looks up at Beru, but her jaw is set and she avoids his gaze. She must know Owen's logic isn't rational, that he's taking out his fear and rage on the only convenient target. Her retreat into the underground house is a deliberate strategy to calm her husband, not tacit agreement with him. Right? 

Even more awkward is the fact the only way out of the courtyard is through the house itself. Owen grabs his shoulder, and drags him through the passageways to the exit to ground level, where a bloodied eopie regards them both with reproach. 

"Stay away from my family," Owen hisses, knocking Obi-wan to the sand as he turns away. 

***

News travels fast among the People and A'Sharad Hett is waiting outside the hut when Obi-wan returns. "You've caused A'Yark much difficulty," he says in Basic, with no hint of whether he is amused or annoyed by the idea. 

"Yes, well, the feeling's mutual," Obi-wan snaps as he slides off the eopie's back to the ground. "Can't you order her to leave that particular farm alone--" 

Hett's body goes rigid, and Obi-wan realizes neither the casual tone nor the implicit presumption in his question have gone over well. He spoke to Hett as he would a Jedi comrade--a familiarity Hett may not forgive. 

Time for damage control. Obi-wan clears his throat, and bows slightly. "If the Chieftan will consider it the humble request of this lowly one," he says as diplomatically as he can in the People's language.

The silence stretches out between them. Finally, Hett says in Basic, "You cannot protect the whole world this way, you know." 

"I don't understand," Obi-wan lies. 

"Say I grant you this, and order my people to leave off those--folk--they would have slain tonight. Then A'Yark and her comrades will attack the woman at the oasis you favor. Then you will ask me to protect _her_ as well." 

Annileen. He means Annileen. The world spins, and Obi-wan fights to remain calm. "I hope you will consider such a humble request." 

Hett folds his arms over his chest. "We both know it would not end there." 

He's right, and Obi-wan hates him for that. "It would be better for your people, too, if you made peace with the settlers," he says at last. 

"It is not your place to decide what is better for us." The lack of emotion in Hett's voice is the eeriest part of the whole exchange--and a warning that Obi-wan strays too far into dangerous territory. 

Obi-wan raises his wrists, places them together with his palms spread out in the People's ritual gesture of supplication. "Chieftan, I beg of you, to order your people to leave--" 

"Enough!" The word is a vibroknife cutting throats in the shadows, a razor in the palm. Obi-wan holds himself still, wondering if it will come to blows. 

But Hett exhales sharply, and some of the tension vanishes. "I will grant you one boon, o foreign one who knows so much and yet so little of our ways. I will grant you my protection over one, and only one, steading you value. But you must choose between the farmers in the desert dunes and the woman in the oasis. You cannot have them both. One corner you may have, but not the whole world." 

He can't breathe. Once again, he sees his nightmare of the Lars' homestead, choking back tears amidst the smoke and flames as charred skeletons lie at his feet--then Annileen Caulwell's ruined face, and those of her children. _No. I can't. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't--_

How did it come to this? 

Has there ever really been a choice? 

"The ones A'Yark attacked tonight," he says slowly, dully, the words cloying in his throat. Anni's laughter, and that of her children ring in his mind, a mocking reminder of his treachery. "On your honor as chieftain, your people will leave them be. May it be so." 

"It will be so," Hett says. "On my honor as chieftain." 

"And tell A'Yark she may try her hand at vengeance," Obi-wan hisses, turning back to his eopie's bridle in a futile attempt to hide his rage. "But I doubt she'll find much pleasure in it." 

By the time he raises his head, Hett is gone. 

*** 

"Anni! _Anni!_!"

"Ben?" Her hair is disheveled, her clothes in disarray, and she is startled enough that his name comes out as a question of its own. She looks down at him, slugthrower cocked and ready in her hands, taking in his haggard face, the wheezing eopie, the gleaming propagation dome behind him on the saddle. "It's the middle of the night, I wish you'd called first--" 

"Anni." There's no time for banter, no time for games. He is deathly serious, and she recoils from the durasteel in his gaze that Old Ben the Hermit has never shown before. "Wake the kids, and let's go. Take only what you can carry." 

"I don't understand--" 

" _Now_!" 

***

He takes her and the kids to Mos Eisley, the one place too armed and dangerous for even a fanatic like A'Yark to consider attacking. He puts them up in a cheap motel at his own expense, with extra credits to ensure the landlord looks the other way at their activities, and avoids reporting anything about his visitors to the authorities. He rents a HoloNet booth and makes the preparations for his next move, careful to cover his tracks to avoid alerting any overly inquisitive spies to his activities. 

Mission accomplished, he returns to the motel to find Anni and the kids curled up together on the sofa watching old holodramas. The kids are both asleep, but Anni jerks to her feet like a startled mynock as he strides into the room, sagging in relief as she realizes who it is. 

"You told me once you'd leave this place and go to school if you could afford it," Obi-wan says to her by way of greeting. "I can make it happen." 

"That's true--" Anni stammers. "But I can't--not after everything else you've done for us--" 

He told her the truth on the way here, as much of it as he dared without frightening the kids too much. He told her that her life, and that of her children were in danger from the Sand People if she stayed, and she could fight and die, or come with him. She came with him. She didn't ask any questions, but he could tell she wanted to. 

"It's already done," he says, and presses a datapad with the evidence into her hand. "Three first-class tickets to Alderaan, on a ship leaving tonight from docking bay 55, and a full scholarship at the university in Aldera when you get there. You'll be safe there. Happy, I hope." 

Her eyes flicker back from the datapad to his face and back again--first in confusion, then in dawning comprehension. "Ben--you didn't--" 

"It's worth it," he says softly, and it is. He didn't pay for it, not in the way that Anni imagines, but it doesn't matter, not if it keeps her and her family safe. "You don't owe me anything. I--called in a few favors." 

"A _few_ favors," Anni repeats incredulously. 

"I used to be important," he says, knowing she is too polite to voice any of the questions burning in her eyes. Her ignorance is her own protection. "I can't leave this place. But you can." 

"I don't understand." 

He turns away, towards the propagation dome still wrapped in the blanket they used to smuggle it into the city to keep its contents shielded from prying eyes. "And I want you to take the tree with you. Find a safe place when you get there, and plant it for me." Bail will help her find the right spot. Obi-wan has already told him everything.

"Ben--" 

"You can thank me by sitting in its shade on a hot day with a cool drink," he says softly. "Raise a toast in my honor. And live your life to the fullest, without anything holding you back. You deserve to be happy, Anni. I'm just glad I knew you."

He's half-expecting the resulting embrace, as the datapad falls to the ground, and her arms encircle his back, her head resting on his shoulder. He strokes her hair as she sobs in intermingled grief and delight, comforts her as she releases the dizzying array of emotions of the last twenty-four hours. 

And then she reaches up to pull his mouth to hers and he did _not_ expect that. He kisses her back reflexively before his mind catches up to what is happening, but he can't pull away without hurting her, so he doesn't, even though he knows he will hurt her, has already hurt her, by not correcting her illusions. The past is lost to them, and there is no future, only the present moment, and he gives this final gift to her as gracefully and gently as he can. 

He doesn't want her to go. But sending her away is the only way to save her. A'Sharad Hett has seen to that. 

"The Force will be with you, Anni," he whispers as she pulls away, sobbing even harder into his shoulder. He wants to cry, too, but he doesn't dare. "Always." 

***

It is night when he returns to the hut at last, and he pauses in the doorway at the distinctive silhouette of one of the People crouched over something at the center of the room. "Chieftain?" Obi-wan says in confusion--then his eyes adjust to the dimness and he realizes it isn't Hett after all, it is H'oarr crouched over the shattered wreck of the last propagation dome, gaderiffi stick in hand. The last uneti seedling is on the floor, torn into pieces. 

Obi-wan pins H'oarr to the floor with a lightsaber at his throat before the young warrior has a chance to react. 

"If you or any of your people touch anything under my protection again, I swear to you on all I hold dear that I will slaughter you the way I slaughtered the man who murdered your family, and you will be cursed to wander as powerless ghosts forever," Obi-wan whispers. "Do you understand?" 

No response. So Obi-wan slams his free hand against H'oarr's mask, and _projects_ the nightmarish memory of Anakin Skywalker's ruined face, the limbless body burning on the fiery sands of Mustafar, and with it the screams that have haunted Obi-wan's nightmare ever since. H'oarr's body bucks under the onslaught, and Obi-wan tightens his grip. "I said, _do you understand me?_ " 

H'oarr's body goes limp, announcing his surrender even before the inevitable nod. All rage and resentment is gone, replaced only with single-minded fear and the desperation to get away and never return. Obi-wan pushes him away in contempt. "Now get out." 

It's not the Jedi way--at least not the official one he was taught growing up in the Temple--but Obi-wan's patience is at an end, and he suspects this will get the message across at last that he is not to be trifled with. 

H'oarr flees into the night. Obi-wan extinguishes his lightsaber and kneels beside the dying tree, too desiccated to revive with precious water from the 'vaporator. He only realizes he is crying when Siri emerges from her hiding place in the walls and crawls up onto his shoulder, licking away his tears. 

He cries even harder after that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am indebted to _The Secret Knowledge of Water_ by Craig Childs for his account of native cultures in the Arizona desert, which was a huge influence on and inspiration for this chapter.

_Everything changes_. This the first and hardest truth a Jedi must learn--that nothing abides but the Force, and that is by nature in continual flux, shifting ceaselessly from one form another without end. _Everything changes, and to cling to something beyond its time is the source of all suffering. To believe otherwise is to live in perpetual delusion, ignorant of the true reality. A Jedi's strength flows with the Force, and there is no separation, no unchanging self beyond it._

Over and over, Obi-wan reminds himself pain _seems_ eternal, but that is an illusion. So is the endless void of his grief, his isolation, his frustration, his rage. Even the vast expanse of dunes, the mountains of the Waste, the planet itself and the twin suns are changing and will one day meet their end.

Right now, he can't help but wish that the end of this world would hurry up and get here already.

He lets that desire go when he can. Self-pity is a luxury he can ill afford. This isn't the worst setback he's ever faced, not by a long shot.

Still, the days that follow after H'oarr's attack are dark ones that he does not care to remember. He keeps discipline as best he can, waking even when he would rather not, and sleeping when he would rather not, eating and drinking as his body demands. For weeks his world narrows to the walls of his hut, and nothing intrudes from outside of it save for the distant whispers of the uneti transplants in the canyon and his own anguish.

There is nothing else he could have done to save Luke, Beru, Anni, the trees. He tried and failed to bridge the gap between two violently opposed worlds; it was inevitable they would one day collide and the shock of the impact would take him down. It was foolish to ever assume it could be otherwise.

That doesn't make the fallout any easier to face.

Anni and her family are hundreds of light-years away, surrounded by water and green and safety and culture and all the other amenities Tatooine lacks. Hett no longer comes at night; for better or worse, there are no traces of the People around his dwelling. Obi-wan dares not visit Beru and Luke now that Owen's dislike is firmly out in the open. The transplanted trees are still there on the outskirts of the hidden city, their roots burrowing deep into the earth, but they are distant and removed, and their well-meant advice is easy to ignore.

He knows what Yoda would say: _Easier it is to stew in your head than it is to face up to the suffering, hmm? A winning strategy, is that?_

But Yoda isn't here and there is no one else here to stop him from being subsumed by the avoidance of his missteps to date--and his simultaneous obsession with them.

***

It is Mos Eisley, of all places, that brings him back to himself. The settlement is a jumbled maze of misfits and ne'er-do-wells, a lonely shore upon which the detritus of a hundred worlds wash up, abandoned by the tides of fate. It isn't home for any of them, but any 'port is welcome in a storm, even one as grimy and rundown as this one.

It is reckless to go to that miserable excuse for a town, with its dusty streets and lost souls, but he is tired of prudence, tired of forbearance, tired of silence and solitude. He craves company, especially the kind that asks no questions. Obi-wan slips into the anonymity of the dusty streets as if he's never been away, one more hooded figure in the crowds. He loiters in questionable bars, quaffing questionable drinks until everything blurs into a heady buzz of sensation.

A posturing lunk with poor judgment tries to pick a fight--while his buddy goes for a pocket. They both immediately regret their choice of careers as even a half-drunk Jedi in secret exile is nothing to be trifled with. Obi-wan dispatches them both with ease--a task which earns him a nod of respect from the bartender, and a measure of personal space from the other patrons when he goes back for another round.

After that, words gets around that the cloaked figure in the shadows isn't worth the trouble; he's earned a certain degree of respect in the only universal language this town understands. Still, he keeps a wary eye on his surroundings--as well as his back--at all times.

But he's left alone in his melancholy, eavesdropping on conversations meant for other ears, lapping up the secondhand contact along with the alcohol. Hungry for connection, these scattered snippets in a hundred different languages are all he dares allow himself now. The chatter and gossip of smugglers and spacers, mercenaries bragging about their kills, and off-duty security blowing first their paychecks and then their brains in cascades of increasingly poor decisions, all converge in a careless delirium that almost-- _almost_ \--drowns out the painful memories and nagging voices in his head.

And then everything Obi-wan Kenobi thought he knew about his life is tossed aside in a single, electric instant.

Again.

"--got out of there just before Vader and the 501st showed up and turned the whole city to rubble. They shut the whole place down so fast, the people never knew what hit 'em--"

Obi-wan snaps out of his stupor, his senses pinned on the inebriated Barabel mercenary halfway across the room.

_No. It can't be. It's not possible._

The merc rambled on to her compatriot, oblivious to the focused attention of the human in the back.

"'Sssh, I _mean_ , he could be a droid, but if so he's like no droid I've ever seen. A killing _machine_. Definit'ly not human. Trust me, no human's that good at killing. He's too thorough. You've seen all the propaganda holos, right, where he killed the traitors in the Senate on the Emperor's orders? Never know where he's going to turn up next and you better hope you're not anywhere nearby when he does--"

The merc is wrong. _Has_ to be wrong. Vader is dead. Obi-wan killed him on Mustafar. Watched him die. Heard the screams of a dying man in his dreams ever since.

His hands shake. _I don't believe it._

He knows he lies.

The Barabel waves down the bartender for another drink, complaining about the newly imposed taxes on personal military contractors and the host of accompanying bribes that are the cost of doing business under the current regime. She doesn't mention Vader's name again, and for a moment, Obi-wan is tempted to write the whole experience off as a drunken hallucination.

Were this any other world or time, Obi-wan would offer to buy the merc a drink, ply her with questions and perhaps some gentle Force suggestions. But this is Tatooine, and he is weary and alone, and unable to summon the right words. He downs the rest of his vodka, slaps a tip on the counter along with the glass, and slips away to conduct a little investigation of his own.

***

The Barabel is right. The black-clad creature known as Darth Vader isn't human at all. She _is_ right about the killing, though.

The propaganda videos aren't hard to find--the news sites are full of them. The booths are rented by the hour, but he finds what he came for in the first two minutes. If he hadn't spent all of his time off-grid in the desert he would have seen them all long before.

Obi-wan stares at the screen of the battered computer--fifty years out of date, with a failing screen continually on the fritz, and something sticky on the keyboard he doesn't want to think about--and tries to remember how to breathe. In. Out. In. Out. The sound of his own breath is a faint, eerie echo of the rasping machine in the holos, as the red lightsaber dips and weaves, offering no mercy and no quarter.

There is no being in the galaxy that Obi-wan knows more intimately than Anakin Skywalker. There's no mistaking the distinctive twirl of the saber, the set of his posture, the angle of that dark masked helmet as Vader pauses in reflection, the grim calm before the slaughter.

All the deaths are so clean and pure, so simple, so easy. Fake, almost. There's barely any blood.

Obi-wan's stomach roils. He ought to shut the machine down and walk away, but he's paralyzed, pinned and helpless, a mute witness to everything. This isn't the first time he's witnessed Vader's handiwork, too late and too removed in space and time to stop him.

This time, at least, he knows what to expect.

***

Night falls on the Jedi Temple and the Room of a Thousand Fountains is veiled in shadows. The soft, steady tinkle of water is punctuated by the sporadic glow of blaster fire in the distance as martial law is implemented across the city-planet. Obi-wan kneels beside the corpse of old Cin Drallig, who gave him his first lesson in bladecraft decades ago, surrounded by the bodies of the children Drallig died defending. He recognizes Bene, Drallig's apprentice, and young Whie Malreaux beside her; the rest are unknown to him. All of the dead bear cauterized burns that could only be from a lightsaber.

But there is no time to linger. He walks the empty corridors with Yoda at his heels, the two of them bathed in the eerie glow of emergency beacons and occasional sparks where exposed circuit still smolder. They walk in silence because there is nothing to say, nothing that will change the horrors relentlessly unfolding before them.

Yoda shakes his head when Obi-wan goes straight for the security footage, though he knows nothing but pain will come from it. In his heart, Obi-wan already knows what they will see, but denial is his only shield against the horrors, and it is a strong one.

To be the implacable arm of justice, he must excise every trace of doubt. If he is to confront the killer and survive, he must be sure.

So he holds his breath as a miniature Anakin appears, slicing through the crowd of terrified apprentices in a whirlwind dance. Both the tinny screams and the battle itself are mercifully short. Beauty and death are wrapped in one compact package, delivered by one who represents the Jedi Orders's greatest success--and its greatest failure.

The eeriest part is Anakin's expressionless face throughout it all. He is not gleeful, not crazed. He is purposeful, determined--almost bored. It's as if his former friends and colleagues mean nothing to him, as if they were furniture to be re-arranged and re-assembled at will.

Then holo-Anakin sheathes his lightsaber and kneels as a hooded figure in black steps into the camera's field of vision. "The traitors have been destroyed and the archives are secured, my lord," Anakin says. He might have been speaking of the latest smashball scores. Or the weather.

"You have done well, my new apprentice," the shadow says. It's Palpatine's voice. Obi-wan clenches his fists, his nails digging into his palms as the final confirmation of treachery hits home. "Do you feel your power growing?"

"Yes, my master."

 _My master_. He's never called anyone but Obi-wan that before. He hasn't used that title in years, except as a running joke. To hear him use it for Palpatine--the Sith Lord, the traitor, who has been manipulating all of them for _decades_ now--is one last stab in the heart, one last betrayal.

For Obi-wan, that is the moment where Anakin Skywalker truly dies, replaced by a walking corpse with the same face.

"Lord Vader, your skills are unmatched by any Sith before you," Palpatine croons, oblivious to Obi-wan's roiling emotions. "Go forth and bring peace to our Empire."

Obi-wan scrolls back to a different camera, watches the Great Uneti hacked to pieces in the courtyard and then burned alive. He switches to another and keeps going. More bodies pile up. He fills his aching and empty heart with the echoes of the slaughter; all the better to sustain him for what must come next.

Yoda sighs, reaches for Obi-wan's hand and squeezes it gently. There is nothing else to be done. They must gather their strength now or else they, too, will die. This is no time for reproach, not here at the end.

Besides, nothing Yoda can say is worse than what Obi-wan is already thinking to himself.

***

He doesn't remember much of the journey home from Mos Eisley. There is only the endless circle of thoughts chasing each other in futile, pointless loops of guilt and recrimination.

_All this time. All this time I thought you were dead, Anakin. All this time, I thought I'd killed you. But you're still alive, trapped in that shell, a prisoner of whatever machines they used to keep you breathing--_

No. Anakin Skywalker died the day the Jedi Temple was attacked by Palpatine's apprentice Vader. Anakin, too, had been betrayed--by Palpatine, by the Dark Side, by the Jedi--and most of all, by Obi-wan himself.

_I failed you, Anakin. I failed you. Over and over again, I failed you. I am so, so sorry. You deserved better. If only I had--_

Yet Obi-wan's relief grows along with a fresh influx of grief. His student, his brother, his best friend, isn't dead after all. Obi-wan might have failed everything and everyone in the galaxy when he failed to kill Vader. But at least he no longer has to bear the weight of Anakin's--or _Vader's_ \--death on his conscience.

_Did you see this in your troubled visions of the future, Yoda? Did you know it would come to this?_

This revelation changes everything. He must leave Tatooine, hunt Vader down, and finish what he'd started on Mustafar. There was no way he could stay here knowing what he knows, no way he could choose to stay hidden and watch over Luke while Vader lives.

Or he could stay here and wait--for what, exactly? For Luke to grow up and face Vader himself while Obi-wan stayed in the shadows? What if Luke failed? What if he and Yoda were wrong about everything?

 _Let me return when the time is right,_ he'd said to Bail Organa with such confidence. _Trust my assessment of the situation--or Master Yoda's, if you can't trust mine._

He laughs bitterly at that. _My judgment has served us all so well thus far. And Master Yoda's track record is far from spotless at the moment_.

And yet--if that were true--wouldn't that be all the more reason to stay out of galactic affairs entirely?

Stars turn above him in the patterns he has come to recognize from late nights and clear skies. The eopie lumbers onward, bearing him back into the desert, even as the temptation to grab the reins and head back in the other direction ebbs and flows. He cannot make a decision, and so she bears him home, weak and shaking from revelations and alcohol, wracked with uncertainty about his next move.

***

When the first knock comes, he ignores it--and the second and the third. He knows who it is, and why they've come; a Sandcrawler can't sneak and N'kez isn't subtle. Like all good salesbeings, the Jawa refuses to take silence for an answer, and keeps up the racket for fifteen minutes before a bleary Obi-wan finally relents and opens the door a crack.

He blinks into the bright sunlight, unable to make out more than brown, hooded silhouettes and shining eyes. Not just N'kez then--the whole tribe has come out for the spectacle.

"Y-e-ss?" he ventures, the words thick and heavy in his dusty mouth. He's still bleary from that wretched trip to Mos Eisley--the lack of water and the preponderance of alcohol combining in the mother of all hangovers.

A torrent of words assail him as all the Jawas speak at once. Obi-wan winces, headache flaring, and eventually manages to gain their attention. "No, I am _not_ interested in more 'vaporator parts right now, but--"

An idea strikes. He opens the door all the way, and gestures towards the abandoned humidity domes, in the shadows. "--I'd be grateful if you could get _those_ off my hands."

The excited Jawas push past him with a rush, eager to reclaim the gear they previously sold him. The resulting chaos takes more than an hour to sort out; N'kez keeps trying to dicker down a price that Obi-wan refuses to name, explaining that this time, he doesn't care about credits, he just wants it all gone.

It starts out as a perfunctory stubbornness on Obi-wan's part, yet he becomes more and more engaged as the negotiations continue. After so much time with the angry hypocrisy of humans and the frustrating half-truths and riddles of the Sand People, the Jawas' single-minded focus is refreshing.

Eventually, N'kez agrees to take the gear now in exchange for unspecified future favors, to which Obi-wan accedes with a shrug. The other Jawas, who are still hustling the domes back into the crawler, burst into another round of cheers at N'kez's bargaining prowess, followed by an upbeat song about the thrill of the deal.

Obi-wan waves as the crawler wobbles off, then retreats inside to survey the scene. The only dome he hadn't let them take are the pieces of the broken one that H'oarr shattered the night he murdered the last uneti sapling. Why had he saved that one, of all things? He doesn't understand it. Even so, the room is markedly less cluttered, though the comings and goings of so many bare feet have tracked huge plumes of sand all over the stone-paneled floor.

He takes a deep breath. His head still aches like hell, but the unexpected visitation of the bustling, industrious little aliens and their economic pursuits has yanked him out of his stew of self-pity. He pauses, studying the room, only to be seized by a sudden impulse to _clean this place up_.

Maybe what he needs right now is a fresh start. He can't change the past, but at least he can stop living in squalor.

He rolls up his sleeves and sets to work.

***

Dusting. Sweeping. Scrubbing. In other institutions, there are droids for these chores, but growing up in the Temple means taking turns cleaning the public spaces, keeping one's personal bunk--and later, quarters--orderly and neat. It is easy enough when one has few possessions. But he's let himself grow slack since the confrontations with the People, and it shows.

It is only when he picks through the remains of the broken humidity dome that the inspiration comes to him. _Huh. I could fix my personal 'vaporator with this._ That particular piece of equipment was damaged by H'oarr's vandalism and he hasn't touched it since.

Perhaps, he realizes, staring at the wreckage, it's time for a walkabout of his own.

****

Where is the line between childhood and adult responsibilities? For a Jedi, it's their Trials, which Obi-wan bypassed when he fought the red-tattooed Sith Lord who murdered Qui-Gon on Naboo. Forthe People, it's their first walkabout, the time they vanish into the desert to follow the ancient routes and test their wits and skills against the elements. In both cases, the supplicant returns transformed, with a new title to accompany their new role. But unlike the Jedi, a Person might choose to walkabout at any time in later, for any reason--walk away from their old life in exchange for a clean slate if they should return.

H'oarr was on walkabout when Anakin Skywalker murdered his family; there was no home for him to return to. Anakin murdered his own Jedi family while Obi-wan was away on a hunt; the hut perched on the edge of the Dune Sea is the closest thing to a home he's had ever since. Hett and his people adopted H'oarr and gave him a new home of sorts; Obi-wan still searches for his own place in the world. Perhaps he can find it on walkabout.

And then there is the question that haunts him ever since he's learned of Vader's resurrection: should he remain hidden here on Tatooine or confront his erstwhile apprentice before any more damage is done?

He doesn't know why he's going on foot to see the uneti, only that he must. Hett may have shared the stories, but as an outsider, Obi-wan will find no acceptance among the People for his efforts, only grief. Nor will the settlers understand the reasoning behind this mad venture--not even Beru, sympathetic as she might be in other respects. For better or worse, the answers he seeks lie within his own mind and heart, and walkabout is one way to find them.

The alternative--the safer way, the surer path--is to sit cross-legged for days watching breath after breath rather than walking into the bare and unyielding wastes to see what rises up out of the emptiness. But recklessness seizes him--or perhaps a different kind of courage--so walkabout it is.

The eopie--nicknamed "Ama," the same term of endearment the People give their own mounts--comes and goes as it pleases in its enclosure and the automatic food and water dispensers are well-stocked. He certainly hasn't offered the old girl any more personal attention of late. She'll be fine on her own, as will Siri. They both seem to value his company, but neither requires it.

He takes only the necessities. A cloak, some ration bars, his personal 'vaporator--and his lightsaber, of course. The rest he will find on the way, or not.

He looks back once at the hut, then shrugs and trudges onward. There's nothing for him here except _things_ and _time_ , and there is no room for either on walkabout.

For better or worse, he is free.

***

No one walks far on Tatooine. The settlers have speeders and Skyhoppers, the People have banthas; those who have neither beast nor transport stay home. To be on foot, even with equipment, is to soon be lost, stranded, or dead, say the 'civilized' folk. For the People, to stray far from the clan is unwise; exile is the harshest punishment, reserved for traitors, madmen, or ghosts.

But normal rules do not apply on walkabout, nor does Obi-wan care what people think of him now. Anyone watching him will see old Ben, the crazy hermit--or perhaps the fearsome sorcerer--of the Dune Sea, who will curse you with his evil eye if you cross him. What else can you expect from such an ill-luck man?

Obi-wan's never had much faith in machines; he's trusted his fate to many beasts of burden and never been disappointed yet. But even though he's walked this particular route more than a dozen times when planting the uneti, shedding that one last companion and walking alone into the Judland takes courage he didn't know he had.

On foot, he is vulnerable and exposed, despite the canyons' high walls. He picks his way across packed sand and over boulders, keeping to the shadows as best he can. He is careful where he puts his hand and feet and always looks before setting them down, just in case. Once a clatter of pebbles fall from above and he looks up to see a vaguely reptilian creature picking through an almost vertical scree of talus. A canyon krayt, perhaps? Or one of the hoodoos and haints, the restless ghosts of the Peoples' tales?

He knows the way from long familiarity; memory, not maps, carries him through the twists and turns. Yet as he keeps walking, subtle trails appear in the sand, the stones sorted by millennia of tramping feet. These are the walkabout lines, visible to anyone who stood still long enough to pick them out from random traces of wind and gravity. This is one way young People find their way in strange landscapes, one directional sign that neither wind nor weather can hide from them.

He follows the path of long-vanished rivers that hacked away the soft rocks and left the rest behind to crumble as they will. To walk in the Judlands is to experience the awesome power of forgotten lakes and rapids, the deep roar of ancient history.

The People tell stories of the floods, and of the sacrifices their ancestors made to stop them. Their prayers worked a little too well, and thus the desert came to be.

But there is still moisture on this planet, hidden in the air and dark crevices, bubbling up from underground. The settlers decry the People as savages, but the People have the last laugh. The mountains and canyons they claim as for their own hold what little water remains, not the open plateaus and rolling dunes favored by the colonists.

(A memory flares: _"So why do your people wear 'vaporators if you have other water?" Obi-wan asks Hett once he realizes the truth. The Jawas scavenge or trade for machines where they can; the People rarely bother, with two exceptions: 'vaporators or slugthrower components. All else is superfluous._

_Hett shrugs. "Our people survived for millennia without them, and could do so again if we must. But it is our way to only take what water we need to survive, and no more. Now that we have the tools to pull the water from the air, we leave the sacred water in the ground, where it ought to be, and protect it from those who would suck it dry. If the water dries up, all life would cease."_

_"You mean your people used to walk alone in the desert for days on end with only the water they could carry?" Obi-wan can't bring himself to believe it._

_Then he remembers the vast city carved in stone, the abandoned aqueducts, the People uprooting themselves to wander the wastes. The same logic applies here. In its own way, it's not so different from the code of the Jedi: to adapt themselves to the world, rather than forcing the world to accommodate them._

_"You can try to get somewhere and die, or you can find water and live," Hett says after long silence. "That's how it is here. We have always chosen life. That is why we will live and the aliens will die. That is what separates us from them--not 'vaporators or slugthrowers. That is why we can use them and still remain ourselves."_ )

Enough. He's supposed to be thinking about his own life, not water and sand, but it's hard to walk in this landscape and think of anything else. The harsh rattle of the 'vaporator echoes in the silence--and for a moment, it's Darth Vader breathing in his ears.

He stumbles forward, retching, even as he reaches up to disconnect the machine at his back. He breaks into a shambling run, in a desperate frenzy to be somewhere, _anywhere_ but this skin and flesh, this body and mind, this time and place. Anywhere but here, anyone but Obi-wan Kenobi, the failure.

The half-full tank on his back sloshes as he runs, undermining the grandiosity of his gesture. Thirst is mostly psychological, anyway. He'll make it to the trees long before he needs to draw on any more water than he has.

***

Hours pass and his water supply dwindles. He drinks slowly and steadily, counting steps and breaths and the stories his mind spins to fill the silence. When the tank is finally empty, he sips at empty air, pauses to clear his raw and aching throat, and keeps going.

Maybe the physical pain will distract him from the pain in his mind. It's worth a shot, he thinks, though he's aware enough to realize he's not thinking so clearly now. He presses on, over and around the now-familiar landmarks: that pile of boulders, this curve of the canyon. Everything is recognizably familiar, yet foreign up close, on foot, or maybe that's dehydration kicking in.

He used to be so certain of himself--so confident he knew how life worked and his place in the galaxy. Somehow that brought him to this endless desert, and this moment, and he can never go back no matter how much he wants to. He is a fool so many times over: for walking this distance when he could have ridden, for turning off his 'vaporator and stumbling in the dark, a fool for trusting Anakin Skywalker, and for taking on the impossible burden of training him. Amazing how all the rest are minor in comparison to that last one--

He smells the spring before he sees it. The heady scent carries him forward around the last curve and then the uneti trees rising from the surface like Coruscanti skyscrapers in silhouette, and he is there at last. Gleaming insects plunge down out of the sky into the water--drawn by the scent, just like he is. Water glistens in the moonlight, reflecting a thin sliver of sky above, one that shimmers and ripples when he touches it.

He drinks and he drinks, huge gulping sips, even though he knows too much water too fast will be painful. No matter how much he thirsts, there is always more. The water bubbles up from some ancient lake, slowly wicking out to the surface over time, trapped in this deep shadowy corner hidden from the suns. Maybe the settlers or the People could drain it dry, but he never could. Nor could the trees, though he doubts they would ever bother to try.

Tiny crustaceans and translucent amphibians flit from stone to stone underneath the surface, here one moment and gone the next. This pool marks the boundaries of their entire existence--at least until metamorphosis forces them then out into the harsh air, to migrate from water hole to water hole. How do they do it? Impossible to say. And yet they must, because they are _here_ \--

To say the uneti are happy to see him is an understatement. Their delight ripples through him, the taste of water and rock and stars in his mouth, joy-joy-joy-joy-joy- _love_ \--

The barriers he placed in his mind to keep them out shatter; he flops to his knees on the edge of the spring, groping for support to keep himself from falling in. The saplings are still too young and tender for him to learn on, so he settles for a boulder instead. With his free hand, he splashes more water on his face to wipe away the sweat and grime of his journey.

Still, he can't help but notice the trees are growing rapidly, more than double the size he remembers from his last visit. Which was quite some time ago, he realizes with a guilty start.

 _We called you,_ say the trees in their piecemeal fashion--there's no telling where one ends and another begins these days. _We heard you cry out, and we called to you, though you did not answer, but now we drink the same water and feel the same air and taste the same light, and you are HERE with us--_

It's as if he's never been away. Their gladness spills over him, and all pity and self-loathing is washed away in the flood. How could he believe that he was ever alone? Why had he pushed them away?

And in that moment of connection, he _is_ himself, _is_ the trees, is the Force between them, wrapping back and forth between them in streaming loops of energy. He is the water in the springs and the stone underfoot; he is suns and moons and stars and emptiness of space, and the whole galaxy. He isn't separate, and has never been, no matter the conflicting evidence of his senses.

And everything clicks into place. He cannot hate this world because the entire world is his body; he cannot hate his body because it, too, is a manifestation of the entire universe, and both are worthy, just as they are. If he's able to accept Tatooine, it can anchor him the way the People and the trees are anchored--both literally and metaphorically. If he embraces who and where he is instead of struggling to be elsewhere, this very moment is home.

He cannot fight Vader again. It's not a matter of courage, or fear of death--his heart is no longer the shining diamond edge of single-minded justice that it was on Mustafar. He is the older and perhaps wiser of the two, but Anakin-- _Vader_ \--is far more powerful now, fueled by an endless hunger for violence that no amount of blood can satiate. Obi-wan knows when the moment comes to strike the killing blow, he will hesitate--and his opponent will not.

He cannot win if he confronts Vader; he will die. And what will happen to the Jedi Order and to Luke after he is gone? It is selfish to wish for oblivion and an easy end to suffering, but there is work for him here. The hardest thing to do is stay at his post and wait for the right moment to act--and that is exactly what he _must_ do.

And with the unflinching certainty of prescience, he knows he will meet Vader again without a doubt--but he has a choice of the time and place. He must ready himself, ready Luke so when the time comes, he will take the plunge without hesitation, and for the greatest good of the galaxy. It's oddly fitting, given their history, that Vader will be the one to finally kill him.

But death is not to be feared, death isn't the end--only yet another transformation--

The trees don't register the rapid-fire flickers of human consciousness. Their lives move to a different rhythm. They have never been afraid of death, and what is a realization to him is a constant tenor of their lives. They are grounded, and so is he, if he chooses to be. If he forgets, they will remind him.

For all his brief contacts with the Great Tree on Corsucant, and at other Jedi outposts over the years, Obi-wan has never had an experience like this before. But he woke the uneti out of their dormancy, called them into life, poured himself into their consciousness, and the trees had responded. Now they wind him tighter in their network than he had ever believed possible. As long as they grow and prosper, he no longer fears for the future.

As long as there are uneti, there will be Jedi, each calling out to the other, their destined entwined. This he no longer doubts. No wonder the Sith tried to destroy them--as if they could blind the universe into forgetting its true nature.

 _Silly creatures to cut themselves away from everything,_ the uneti cluck among themselves at the idea. 

Obi-wan is in no position to argue.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many anecdotes in this chapter ("Was it worth it?"; the children and the flood) are drawn from or loosely based on details recounted in Craig Child's most excellent non-fiction account of the Arizona desert, _The Secret Knowledge of Water_. I can't recommend this book highly enough. 
> 
> "The water always wins the moment that you let it in" is a line from the song "Miss Hollywood" by Carbon Leaf. 
> 
> [Use of a c-section](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resuscitative_hysterotomy) to relieve [aortocaval compression syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aortocaval_compression_syndrome) is a real medical phenomenon. Padme's death scene has been altered from the ROTS version to fix things that bothered me. I've also played fast and loose with the timeline between the birth of the twins and her death to make Leia's memories of her mother somewhat more plausible.

The immediacy of realization fades over time, but his burden remains light and he is glad of it. He no longer fights the present, the planet, himself--or at least, not so much. He is grounded here because he _chooses_ to be, not because he has to be, and that shift in perspective changes everything.

To his surprise and chagrin, he emerges from that night with the trees ravenously curious about Tatooine and more walkabouts follow. Sometimes the eopie comes along, trailing behind as a beast of burden, but more and more he brings only what he can carry, following the secret paths of water. He pinpoints his routes based on a complex amalgamation of Hett's stories, old survey maps, and his own observations. It embarrasses him how little he's _seen_ after so many years in the same place, how much he learns once he resolves to pay attention to the present instead of the past and the future.

There are secret water holes tucked away in the Jundlands, in the cracks of boulders and hollows in the earth. There are dry streambeds that fill overnight from hidden underground creeks and wither away by second dawn. There are isolated caves where pale, blind fish have dwelt for millennia, before the canyons of the Jundland were cut; as well as larger pools filled with bright-eyed shiners, darters, daces, each with their own special mutations from the inevitable genetic bottlenecks. Each little fern or lichen clinging to shadowed crevices is a cache of hidden water, just as he and all other living things are.

He hasn't seen the water because he never _looked_. No one has, except for the People--and perhaps the Jawas--and therefore they assume it doesn't exist.

From the settlers' perspective, this hidden water is of little practical use--too little to support a human for long, let alone a farm. But that does not mean the water is useless. It transcends mere utility and exists for solely for its own sake. Left to its own devices, it will outlast everything else on this planet. _'The water always wins the moment that you let it in,'_ is a saying is a popular saying on a hundred different water worlds in the galaxy, but Obi-wan did not believe it applied to Tatooine until now.

Other things besides water intrigue him about this planet. He picks through the remains of Fort Tusken, still framed by crumbling adobe walls ruined more by the ravages of war than the passage of time. The place has been picked clean by scavengers--off-world smugglers, he suspects, swooping like womp rats on carrion. (Everyone likes to blame the Jawas when things go missing, but this place is too far into the wastes to bring a Sandcrawler and Jawas never stray far from the protection of home.) He finds only two empty blaster power packs jammed together, containing a note scrawled in a shaky but legible Aurebesh: "Was it worth it?" Obi-wan shakes his head, abandons the message in the sand, and never returns.

In contrast, in the vast salt flat of the Great Chott where the Lars made their home, the landmarks are few and far between. Here, the distant mountains keep the eye and mind engaged while the body works steadily to reach them. Here, there are boulders aligned in a straight, unending lines--also spirals and crude humanoid figures, spread out on such a scale they are only visible from orbit. Who built these and why? Messages from a lost civilization? The ancestors of the People? Hett has never mentioned them, the Jawas refuse to speak of them, and the settlers are too busy scrabbling out a living to notice or care. Another mystery.

In the Dune Sea, deep valleys and ridges reduce the entire world to sand and sky. Walking on rocks and crusted salt is easier than sinking into soft, yielding sand; it sucks him in, pulls him down, as if it yearns to swallow him, too. There is life here, too, though it only occasionally makes its presence known on the surface: giant antlions with their distinctive pit traps; tiny white colonial insects that make hives out of spit mixed with sand; a herd of wild banthas in the distance.

Painstaking and slow, he studies the tracks in the sand, tracing the business of wind and womp rats. He comes to expect where the rats will build their nests and when the krayt dragons emerge to hunt. He listens to the shrill music on the wind that all folk on Tatooine agree are the voices of ghosts, yet there is no sense to it that he can detect.

Often, he spies Sand People in the distance, single-file on their banthas, ignoring him completely. They never engage. Sometimes he thinks he glimpses Hett's distinctive profile among the crowd, or a flash of red from A'yark's crystal eye, maybe even H'oarr in silhouette. Then he blinks, and there is only rock and sand and silence.

So be it. All the same, he is surprised at how much the thought of their rejection saddens him.

***

After he leaves Anakin to burn in the lava field on Mustafar and stumbles back to the ship, he finds Padme still slumped unconscious on the landing pad. Anakin used the Force to crush her windpipe, but she is still alive, though unconscious. The toxic fumes of Mustafar have done her no favors, however, and Obi-wan fears she will die at any moment.

Somehow, he finds the strength to drag her up the gangplank into the ship, strap an oxygen mask over her face, and program the autopilot to take them to the rendezvous point with Bail Organa and Yoda before he collapses in the pilot's chair. When he wakes several hours later and goes to check on her, her breathing is shallow and slow, but steady.

She doesn't wake up when he carries her off the ship and into a real medbay. Once she's settled, the medics cluster among themselves in the far corner of the room, averting their eyes from each other as they scan the monitoring screens for signs of hope.

Then Padme's body heaves and the medics leap into action as their screen light up all at once, beeping and wailing. She isn't due for several weeks at the earliest, but the extreme stress of the past twenty-four hours and exposure to the volcanic gases have triggered premature labor.

She shouldn't be here. She should be at home on Naboo with her family--in seclusion in the countryside, no doubt, because her pregnancy is supposed to be a secret--not surrounded by strangers in a foreign medbay.

None of them should be here, come to think of it. Yet here they are.

Obi-wan holds her hand through all of it even though he should be floating in a bacta tank himself, because what else can he do? His breathing rasps from his own exposure to the fumes, but he's upright and alert enough to chase the medics off, at least for now.

Hours pass and Padme's writhing deepens, though she hasn't opened her eyes. Based on the ultrasounds, the medics determine that a c-section is needed if they are to have any hope of extricating her children.

"Twins?" says Bail Organa, still catching up with current events.

The medics wait patiently for an answer from someone about how to proceed. Obi-wan is exhausted and heartsore,  fuzzy on how he got to be in charge, but _someone_ has to be, and it might as well be him. "Do what you must," he tells them, and they nod and get to it.

The medics ask him to leave because he's ruining their nice sterile environment with his charred and stained clothing. He politely refuses. Then Padme goes into cardiac arrest as her bulging uterus blocks her blood flow, and there's no time left to argue.

In the end, they have no choice but to accept him along for the ride, though he averts his eyes as they cut her open. He's not squeamish, exactly, but there's already been too much death today, and he can't bear to watch yet another person he cannot save.

Miracle of miracles, the procedure works. With the two neonates removed, Padme's blood flow returns to normal and her breathing steadies. She even wakes up, though she's scattered and confused and keeps asking where Anakin is, if he's all right. Obi-wan sidesteps the questions by helping her sit up, and she is distracted when he lays the squalling infants in her arms for the first time--premature, but old enough to survive on their own, without the help of special equipment.

She smiles and strokes their heads as they burrow in at her breasts under the sheet that covers her. "Luke," she says. "Leia."

It takes Obi-wan a second to realize those are their names; it's been a long day. She doesn't explain their origins. Wary of starting a conversation they will both regret later, he doesn't ask.

In the midst of death, life emerges anew, as it so often does. He takes what comfort he can in that.

But it doesn't last. To the intense puzzlement of the medics, Padme lingers in the medbay for weeks, then months, even as her children thrive. She continues to have lung troubles from Mustafar; the lung damage turns out to be permanent, even though Obi-wan experienced far worse with a full recovery. None of the medics can explain it.

Obi-wan knows why, though he doubts the medics will believe him. Everyone has their weak points--shatterpoints, Mace Windu liked to call them. Like it or not, Anakin is Padme's shatterpoint. Now that he's gone--now that he's turned on her--she crumbles to dust, bit by bit.

The Republic she dedicated her life to is gone--all her work towards peace and justice come to naught. That, too, is Anakin's doing. Is it strange, then, that she finds the strange new world they live in unbearable?

 _Wake up_ , he wants to scream at her. _You can't leave me, too. It's not fair. There's so much work to do. We need you. You're stronger than this._ But he's careful to show none of this on his face, keep his voice steady and reassuring. If she catches any hint of his true feelings, she's politician enough to hide it too.

But in the end, who is he to judge her? He understands her better than anyone else in the galaxy, because he loved Anakin Skywalker, too. She is not frail, not weak--just weary. And so is he.

It still isn't enough to keep her with them.

"Promise me you'll watch over the twins," she says to him one night as they sit together, watching the stars after the children are asleep. "Watch over and protect them as best you can. Especially Luke. He's so eager and excitable--just like his father--"

"I will," Obi-wan says, though his heart twists at this sidelong mention of Anakin. "But you'll be here for them, too."

She turns away from him, her face lost in shadow. "No. No. I don't think so." The burning passion that she threw at everything in her life--from galactic politics to what to eat for dinner that night--is directed inward, elsewhere, towards a place he can't see or follow.

He doesn't know what to say, so he says nothing. Silence stretches out between them. He dozes at her bedside, as he has so many nights before.

"Obi-wan," she says at last, and he jerks out of her stupor at how breathy her voice is now. "There is good in him. I know it. I know it--" Then her words dissolve in a coughing fit that doesn't stop--until the moment it cuts off. Even as Obi-wan slaps the panic button to summon the medics to restart her heart, it's too late. She's  gone.

"Her last words were of you, you bastard," he says quietly to Anakin's ghost in the moments before the others arrive. "She deserved better than this. And _you_ didn't deserve _her_."

Anakin's ghost, being a figment of Obi-wan's righteous indignation, makes no reply. It's the one advantage of quarreling with the dead: they always let you have the last word.

They send her body back to Naboo for a quiet funeral. Officially, it's labeled as a case of dengra fever, a rare but inevitably fatal illness. Bail makes all the necessary arrangements. Obi-wan is too far gone with grief to pay any attention to such matters. He sits in the nursery with the children, who cry for a mother that will not come, and does what he can to soothe them. It doesn't help. They cry anyway.

He is surprised, then, when the twins stop crying, and turns to see Master Yoda at the door.

"A quorum we are not," Yoda sighs, after a few minutes of play with the children, "and yet, all of the Council that remains." In the months since Palpatine's ascension, rumors have swirled of survivors of the purge, but none have been confirmed as genuine. "Lacking my judgments have been of late, and yet I know not what else to go by. A home, these children must have, yet dangerous for all, I think, for the Emperor to find them."

Obi-wan nods. "And Naboo is too much in Palpatine's mind to risk leaving the children with Padme's family there."

"Then split up they must be, to reduce the risk of discovery."

Obi-wan takes a deep breath. He's poised on the edge of some vast abyss, and there is only darkness below. "As far as I know, Anakin's family still lives on Tatooine, though he was not close to any of them except his mother. I will take Luke to them."

"To Tatooine, you will go. And then?" Yoda peers at Obi-wan closely, as if he already knows the answer. And maybe he does.

Another deep breath, and Obi-wan steps over the cliff. "I promised Padme I would watch over Luke. Protect him." He manages a chuckle. "She seems to think he would need it."

"Hmmph. A mother's intuition is not to be ignored," Yoda says--too tactful to suggest that Luke might have inherited his headstrong father's abilities for drama and disaster. "So be it."

"You don't mind?"

Yoda taps his stick against the ground as he meets Obi-wan's gaze. "Rest we need. Rest we have earned. Meditate, we must, on the best course of action to come. Perhaps these two younglings are the key to victory over the Sith--and perhaps not. Either way, wait we must, for the right time to act." He turns away towards the viewport, towards the stars. "A planet I know, yes, from long ago--a planet I know that the Sith do not. Dagobah, it is called. Rest I will, when I get there." In that moment, he is so very, very old.

"And what of the girl? You will take her with you to this place--Dagobah?"

Yoda smiles toothily. "No. No place for a human, this is, let alone a youngling. Senator Organa, I think, will take her back to Alderaan with him. Safe, she will be. Loved, she will be. A Princess, perhaps, if his wife does not object."

Obi-wan has only been to Alderaan once, but he remembers vast extended families living in underground warrens,  bands of free-roaming children, all somehow related to each other, laughing and screaming with joy as the adults smiled indulgently and went about their business. The memory is a joyful one, in stark contrast to how dark his life is  of late. Yoda is right: Alderaan is a safe haven for any orphaned child, particularly one whose heritage is as... fraught as Leia's.

There is, however, one drawback: "They cannot teach her the ways of the Jedi there."

Impossibly, Yoda shrugs. "Perhaps that is for the best. Other skills she may learn, ones that would be more useful to our cause."

Obi-wan is more startled by this pivot from the grand master of the Order than he cares to admit. "Then what should I tell Luke when he is ready to begin the training?"

"Perhaps, perhaps..." Yoda shakes his head, as if to clear it. "Clouded, the future is, and much is hidden. You must trust your intuition, what to tell and what to reveal, when the right time it is."

Obi-wan's heart sinks. More than anything, he wants the old Jedi to tell him what to do--give him something solid and tangible to hold onto in the midst of despair. But he should have known better than to expect that from Yoda, of all people. Even in the good old days, Yoda had a reputation as someone who always made you figure things out for yourself.

***

Years later, striding through the desert, it occurs to him that Luke is old enough now to begin his training, if Obi-wan can work up the nerve to do it. It was hard enough to take on a student when he didn't know what he was getting into, or how dire the consequences for failure would be. Now--his terror rises, stark and severe, and he stumbles over a rock in the darkness, and cries out sharply.

He is more afraid of Luke than anything else on Tatooine--and rightly so, under the circumstances.

Only that's not quite right, is it? He catches his breath, along with his footing, as the insight hits him. He's afraid of himself--afraid he'll screw up again, and somehow make things even worse. That seems impossible at the moment, but he has no doubt that he could manage it somehow. It seems to be a universal law.

It's not Obi-wan's fault that Anakin fell--it was Anakin's choices, over and over again, that lead to disaster. Yet it would be a lie to say that Obi-wan was uninvolved, or that he is completely devoid of responsibility. He must own what he did and what he failed to do, never mind that the past is unknowable and there is no way to change it.

If he couldn't face Padme's questions about what happened to Anakin, what will he say to Luke?

But whether he fails or not in this self-appointed task, he can't put it off any longer.

***

He dares a visit to Beru now and then, mostly whenever he knows Owen will be out with Luke. That man is a homebody at heart, but one who makes supply runs at remarkably predictable intervals. The Larses don't purchase what they can't grow, make, or repair for themselves, but no one--not even the ferociously competent Beru--can do everything, even if they cared to.

He and Beru pick more or less where they left off: life on the farm, Luke's latest antics, the price of water. The events surrounding the Sand People's attack, Owen's ultimatum, and the Caulwell family's departure are all carefully skirted. Their conversations are not as restful as they used to be, but it's far better than nothing.

This particular afternoon, Beru scrapes vegetables for the evening meal while he perches on a stool, waiting for the right moment to change the subject. At last there's a lull in the conversation, and he clears his throat.

"I think it's time I started teaching Luke the ways of the Jedi--"

Beru doesn't even look up from her pile of squash. "No."

Obi-wan is startled enough to forget his manners. "I'm sorry--what?"

Beru's fingers don't stop, but she raises her head away from her task, and looks him dead in the eye. "No."

"I don't--" Obi-wan sputters. Then, because he can't help himself: "Is this because of Owen?"

"No," she repeats for the third time, with remarkable patience considering his continued and unrepentant rudeness. "We haven't discussed it. _I_ don't think that would be a good idea, so there's no reason to mention it to him."

There's no hint of anger or malice in her voice. It's rare for someone to catch Obi-wan off-guard so completely. For once in his life, he's at loss for words.

"You brought Luke here so he would be safe with us," Beru continues with the same briskness she applies to the squash. "We will do whatever it takes to keep him that way. With all due respect to your personal competence, what you're offering does not qualify."

"That's not--"

"It's not a request if I can't say no."

Unaccountably, there is a slugthrower in her hands, aimed directly at him. Does she keep one under the kitchen counter for emergencies? Obi-wan raises his hands up in a universal gesture of _Don't shoot_ and gives her what he hopes is a winning smile.

"Owen and I are his guardians, not you," Beru says calmly, unmoved by his facade of harmlessness. "And If I thought for a moment that you would go behind my back on this, I would shoot you right here and now and drag your body out for the scavengers."

He could _make_ her change her mind. The last few minutes notwithstanding, he's always been good at persuasion, both with and without the Force. Her will is strong, but his is stronger, if he chooses to exert it. She would fight him, but he can wrest away her resolve and make her forget she ever felt otherwise. All he has to do is stretch out his hand and make it so.

But even if she never consciously remembered what he had done, he would. And yet another friendship would be ruined beyond repair.

And she's right. It's _not_ safe for him to teach Luke--not for Obi-wan and certainly not for Luke. He's been avoiding Luke for a long time now, because he's afraid of how much Luke is like Anakin, afraid of what will happen if he passes on his same mistakes to the next generation.

All the fantasies he spun in his head of teaching a blond-haired boy were really about the chance to fix his own mistakes. Has he ever really seen Luke as _Luke_ , or only Anakin 2.0? What is he trying to accomplish here, anyway?

Training a boy so he can grow up to kill his father? What kind of teacher does that make him? There's no way Beru would ever approve if she knew. Family is family here, even when that family was a murderer and a traitor, who brought ruin and disaster down on everyone and everything he loved.

_Maybe the best thing I can do is to stop meddling._

And Yoda hadn't ordered him to do--or not do--anything. _You must trust your intuition_ , were his only words on the matter. But can Obi-wan trust himself when he's so often wrong?

But he can trust Beru--solid, steady, competent, kind Beru. And while she might know little of the Force, she knows enough to refuse the life Obi-wan offers. She knows Luke better than he does now. Would she really turn Obi-wan away if the training was in her nephew's best interest?

He releases a breath he didn't realize he was holding. He surrenders, lets the temptation to meddle drift away. "When he's of age to decide for himself--"

"--then we'll let him," Beru finishes.

"Promise me."

"I promise."

A long pause. The slugthrower is still aimed at him. He doesn't move.

At last she says, "If you wanted to be responsible for him, you could have kept him. But you gave him to _us_. And Owen and I are his parents, or the closest thing he has now, and we make the decisions for him until he's of age, not you. I don't mind you paying a call to me now and then if you're discreet and keep your mouth shut, but Owen's right: you'll stay away from Luke if you know what's good for you."

She fixes him with such a sharp look that all he can do is nod and wait for her to look away. She lifts her chin a fraction of an inch, and the slugthrower vanishes in tacit acknowldgment of her victory.

"I may not be a Jedi," she adds as she goes back to chopping squash, "but that doesn't mean I don't know what's right."

Blinking in bewilderment at the sudden shift back to the domestic, Obi-wan realizes belatedly that underestimating Beru Whitesun was a mistake. Even Master Yoda would have trouble staring her down if she looked at  _him_ like that.

***

So he makes a holocron instead. The construction is both time-consuming and tedious, but it's a better use of his time than anything else he could be doing. N'kez enjoys the challenge of locating the necessary parts, and brings copious amounts of scrap out to the hut for inspection until Obi-wan has what he needs.

The crystals are more challenging to procure. He puts some feelers out on the black market, but despite several promising leads, nothing comes of it. He ends up sneaking into the governmental archives in Bestine to dig up the old planetary survey maps, back when people thought they could get rich off this place. There's no shortage of mineral wealth here, but only a small fraction of it was ever mined before the companies went bankrupt and the colonists turned to subsistence farming to survive. There's an abandoned mine on the other side of the planet that will do nicely; he marks the coordinates down on a datapad of his own and keeps browsing.

He can't help but notice a glimmer on the most recent aerial maps--a faint sparkle of water that marks the secret uneti oasis. He doubts anyone will come looking--the hardest part of sneaking is to make sure nobody remembers he's ever been here, which is harder when there are only a handful each sure--but there's no point in being careless. He slices into the master file and edits that detail out--makes it appear as pure rock, just like its surroundings--before he leaves the archives.

Attaining the crystals is several adventures in and of themselves, ones that take him the length and breadth of the planet and continually test his mettle and resolve. It's also only the beginning. Once the necessary stones are in hand, he must shape and polish them into the desired forms. Making a holocron from scratch is like making a lightsaber, multiplied by an exponential factor of difficulty.

Obi-wan spent a good chunk of his days as a youngling pouring through the Temple archives, but he always studied  _from_ holocrons not _about_ them. He knows his device _can_ work, and it _will_ work--the how is up to him. He dreams of circuit schematics and novel configurations of electronics, coaxing the crystals into compliance the same way he coaxed the uneti seeds out of dormancy--trial and error and making it up as he goes along. Just like water, he is bound and determined to win, to take on the shape of his surroundings and transform them into something new.

Once he has a working model, he doesn't rest on his laurels. He talks for hours at a time for crude recordings to be stored in the crystal: all the stories he knows.

There are three kinds of stories, Maks Leem liked to say. The mythic stories of the past; the inspirational biographies of real-life heroes; ancedotes from one's own life. Obi-wan tells them all. It takes a long time.

Once he finished a recording, he plays it over, edits as needed, then uploads the file to the holocron's vast memory. Files are tagged and locked behind layers of security, depending on the querant's identity, and talents in the Force. It's a delicate balance: too strict, and the information will be hidden forever; too lax, and anyone can access it--with potentially disastrous results.

He's making this for Luke, but it may be that Luke never sees it. It's also for generations yet unborn, who may rise again thousands of years later, after Palpatine and his Sith empire have crumbled to dust. Who knows? It's not his place to say.

It's healing to speak of what he's never shared with any other living soul. He tells those unknown listeners about his youth in the Temple, his training with Qui-Gon, his first meeting with Anakin, and his own doubts about his abilities as a teacher. But he stumbles when it comes to that awful revelation on Coruscant, that nightmarish scene on Mustafar. He chokes on the truth, cannot spit out the words--as if his narration makes it real, finalizes a nightmare into reality.

So he tells the story he wishes were true instead, the story he _can_ speak, the one he pretends is real. Anakin died in the Temple at Vader's hands; it was Vader, not Anakin, who Obi-wan dueled on Mustafar. Simple. Easy. Done.

What's the harm in it? It's not a lie, not really, and there's no one except Yoda and Anakin himself who would be able to contradict him. It's true enough, from a certain point of view--one that he still needs in order to stomach what he did, what he failed to do.

(Does it still count as murder if the victim didn't really die? But he _meant_ it to be murder, and that's what it was, what it still is. The fact that Anakin--Vader--survived doesn't change that.)

He records it, and plays it back, and listens to his rambling thoughts, over and over again. Then he shakes his head at his own foolishness, deletes the footage and starts over at the beginning. He gets better at lying, until eventually it starts to feel like the truth, and he can move on.

There's another story that he records that he feels better about. Maybe it's not true either, but it's close enough. It matches the available evidence, and there's no one on Tatooine to contradict him.

_Once upon a time there was a city carved in stone, prosperous and fair, rising out of the redrock canyons, shielded from the harshest light of binary suns. The city was rich and prosperous-- its markets overflowed with spices, storytellers, and songs, hauled in from carefully tended ponds and greenhouses on the urban edge. Gardens and bathhouses were everything, the life-giving water brought in by stone aqueducts. Some of that water came from the fierce storms that ravaged the city now and then, but most came from an ancient underground lake, fossil water that had slept in darkness for millennia before pouring forth to the surface._

_But then there came a time of too much rain, and the canyons flooded, drowning the lower levels of the city carved in stone. To stop the water, the citizens sacrificed their most cherished treasure--their children--and the rains ceased at last. Yet as the floodwater receded, the joy was short-lived--the storms never came again, and the gardens and bathhouses dried to dust, baked in the searing heat. Fell voices cried on the wind, the ghosts of sobbing children, wailing at their fruitless deaths and the perfidy of their parents._

(Here, Obi-wan interjected as an aside that the later human colonists also believed that the wind contained the ghosts of crying children sacrificed by their parents for the sake of water. In the settlers' case, the children were slaughtered in a desperate attempt to bring water back, not make it disappear. Even after millennia without rain, the People--the distant descendants of the city carved in stone--would never do that. They understand that water is necessary for life, but they do not trust it. They do not offer it any more than it has already taken from them.

But back to the story.)

_The unfortunate inhabitants quickly drained down the lake until there was no more water left and all the gardens were dust, the markets silent, the bathhouses empty. Then they fled from their city, scattering on the winds in nomadic bands, continually on the move in order to survive. Yet the city-carved-in-stone remained, hidden in the canyons, and each of their descendants made a pilgrimage to it on the journey to adulthood, reciting the deeds of their ancestors as they walked so they would not be forgotten._

_Centuries passed, and the underground lake gradually re-filled, fed by a network of underground rivers holding ancient water. The water seeped out down the old channels and created a hidden spring in the redrock, shielded from the searing heat of the desert._

_Then a Jedi came from the stars with a handful of seeds, which grew into the most beautiful trees in the galaxy--magic trees that could talk to those with the gift and patience to listen. He planted trees in that hidden canyon, and there they remained for the rest of their days--which are long, because the lives of trees are long and slow, on a different scale of more hurried folk. They and their descendants live on to this day in the canyon by the ruins of the ancient city, waiting for the Jedi to rise and return,  bring them back to settle across the stars on distant worlds as they did before._

He shares this particular story with the uneti. They are polite but uninterested in past deeds, but they enjoy the sound of his voice, and they like the part about themselves. _And then we are here,_ they chant. _We are here. We came here in the dark and we grow, and we grow. We listen to the stars, and suns, dig down into the rock, and crumble it to dust in our roots. We live, we live!_

(He adds that in as an addendum, because they like it so much.)

There are other stories, of course. All the tales of the People he remembers from Hett, what little he knows of the language. What he's learned of the Jawas from his dealings with N'kez, tidbits gleamed from settlers in Dannar's Claim and Anchorhead. His encounters in the desert. The Jedi.

He even discusses the prophecy of the Chosen One, destined to bring balance to the Force. Why, he doesn't know. It's a failure. It's not true. It was never true. It was just a story, and a dangerous one at that.

But prophecies have a way of coming true in the most unlikely fashions. Perhaps Qui-Gon wasn't wrong, exactly, just premature. You never knew when knowledge was going to come in handy.

Call it a hunch.

****

At last, he runs out of stories to tell, and his task is done. He leaves the holocron in the canyon oasis with the trees--much safer there than anywhere else. The holocron serves as a record of all that has happened, a fail-safe in case of disaster. Even if Obi-wan dies confronting Vader someday, if Luke turns away from the training after all ... someone, someday will find it, called there by the voices of the uneti tree in their dreams, and the Jedi will rise again out of the desert.

He never would have considered himself a poet, but the image is a good one. He smiles when he thinks of it.

He worries less about the future now. He'll do what he can while he's still here. Teach Luke what he can when the boy is old enough. Face Vader or not, as destiny will have it. He does his best to enjoy the present while he has it. The future can take care of itself.

One day sitting with the trees, he closes his eyes, and there is Annileen Caulwell--older now, (but so is he), wrapped in a loose robe and shawl of white silk. She sits on a blanket in the shade of a robust, solitary uneti superimposed against the redrock stone of the canyon wall. The effect is eerie, as if he's suspended in two places at once--the desert, and a grassy open field, with only one sun and no moons overhead. She doesn't see him.

"Anni?" he says, and reaches out to her, but then his vision shifts and she is gone. His fingers brush the fibrous bark of the uneti beside him instead of her shoulder. The tree purrs happily, ignoring Obi-wan's momentary confusion.

"Well," he says at last, since there's nothing _else_ to say. "Good to know  you both made it safe to Alderaan. I hoped you would."

She seemed--calm. Peaceful, even. Maybe a touch of melancholy, too, but happy enough. Good for her. Life on Alderaan agrees with her.

He hopes she's moved on, found someone else to build a life with, be the father for her kids he never could. Life is too short for her to carry a torch for him, and he would never ask that of her.

"My purpose is done," he says to Beru later that day, stopping in just in time to catch a fresh pastry out of the oven. "I could die tomorrow and be content."

Beru rolls her eyes. "Stop being so dramatic. You're not getting out of life so easily, you big lunk."

He laughs, wipes the sugar off his face, and acknowledges that she's right.

"I usually am," she says, chuckling.

"Thank goodness for that," he says, which is the cue for both of them to collapse and laugh themselves hoarse.

"But I am glad you're settling in for the long haul," she says once they've calmed down at last. "Does me good to know you're out there, watching over Luke when he's off doing stupid things in the desert with his friends. Takes a load off my mind."

This is true, although he's never told Beru what he gave up in order to protect Luke from the Sand People. Maybe she wouldn't think it so big a sacrifice, losing his tentative friendship with Hett and sending Anni away to Alderaan. Or maybe she suspects what he's done for her family, and she's thanking him in the only way she knows how. The only way he can accept, if he wants to be honest with himself.

One thing for certain: if H'oarr knew that Luke was the son of the man who slaughtered his family, Obi-wan would have to kill him to keep him from avenging his lost honor. It's just as well neither none of the People are privy to that particular secret. That's the problem with revenge: it never stops, it just festers on and on for generations. It's why A'yark has never forgiven the slaughter of her children; why the settlers in Tosche Station and Dannar's Claim shoot at the People when they see them. It's all ancient, twisted karma, wrapped round and round so many lives in endless tangles until someone has the courage to end it. 

The Jedi thought they'd stopped the cycle by destroying the Sith; the Sith survived to prove them wrong. It makes him wonder if he was wrong to fight Vader, after all--but he did try to stop the madness, he _begged_ for Anakin to come back, and Vader didn't listen. Anakin was too far gone down the path to the Dark Side, past the point of no return. And there can be no forgiveness after that. That isn't revenge--that's justice.

At least nobody has to die to end H'oarr's feud with the Skywalkers this time around. Perhaps H'oarr will let go of his hatred and rage, or perhaps he'll take it with him to his grave. That's his choice. Taking it out on Luke isn't an option as long as Obi-wan is around to watch out for him.

He leaves the Lars' homestead an hour before Owen and Luke are due to return, the eopie kicking up clouds of sand as he lets her stretch her legs into a run. She races across the empty expanse of salt and sterility, the late afternoon sun burnishing everything to coppery glares. There's light everywhere, but it's hard to _see_ anything, even with polarized lenses over his eyes to screen out the worst of it.

And then--in the distance--Sand People. A line of them, emerging single-file on their banthas as they crest the cliff of a distant mountain--visible for a brief period before they disappear behind the rocks.

A'Sharad Hett, war-leader and chieftain of his people, leads the way. There's no doubt of it.

Obi-wan's heart is too buoyant for caution and awkward silence. He reigns in the eopie, and shouts a greeting in their own language, the call of acknowledgment from one tribe to another, with no quarrel or blood-feud between them.

The sound echoes across the empty plateau. He knows the moment they hear it because every mounted figure goes rigid and the caravan stops.

Silence. No one moves. No one is quite certain what to do next. Everyone looks to the war-leader.

Then Hett raises a gloved hand over his head, and his people shout a single word with one voice: the traditional response, agreeing no quarrel or blood-feud exist that would require a more violent response.

And then the line of banthas weaves around the corner and Hett is gone. In a matter of moments, the rest of his people are no longer visible.

Obi-wan knows he may never speak with Hett again--never recapture what closeness they had. They come from two very different worlds; they are alien to each other in ways that neither one knows how to bridge.

But for one shining moment, they reached out and closed that gap, met on their own terms as equals. That's enough. That's enough. He'll take it.

"Hey, _ama_ , my beauty, my love," he says to the eopie, who snorts and bounces in impatience underneath him, eager to return to more familiar territory. For once, he's in full agreement.

"Let's go home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING! A lot happened in my life between when I started this fic, and when I finished it, and I'm grateful for all of the readers who left encouraging comments when it felt like _I_ was the one slogging through the desert. Thanks for sticking with this all the way to the home stretch. 
> 
> "Was it worth it?" It was for me. I hope you feel the same way! 
> 
> (Bonus if you enjoyed the journey more than Obi-wan did.)

**Author's Note:**

> Maks Leem is a Jedi master featured in _Yoda: Dark Rendezvous_ by Sean Stewart. Roksha, the unnamed Twi'lek are my inventions, and N'kez the Jawa are my inventions. The Sharad Hett and as-yet-unnamed Tusken Raider's stories are based on the _Star Wars: Outlander_ comics from Dark Horse.


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